My *like* Blog Post

Yesterday morning I was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, my future college, taking placement tests for this upcoming fall. The test was comprised of three parts, mathematics, English, and a foreign language (in my case, Spanish). In the few days before this test, I attempted to cram my brain full of mathematical concepts I had learned during my freshman and sophomore years of high school but haven't thought about since then. I also tried to memorize how to conjugate Spanish verbs in what seemed like millions of different tenses, although in reality there were probably about ten. I stressed over the amount of information I needed to know for these two subjects, but I didn't give the English test a second thought. For some reason, grammar has always been something that comes easily to me. It probably started in my eighth grade English class where we would begin each day with a grammatically incorrect sentence on the board which we would all have to correct and identify the different parts of speech found in that sentence. Ever since then, I've been kind of a stickler for grammar and often find myself correcting my friends and family for misusing certain words, such as "good" and "well." I haven't been exposed to as many grammatical lessons in high school as I had been in middle school, however just practicing through writing and speaking has kept my memory somewhat fresh.

About two weeks ago in my senior English class, my teacher announced that she would be paying special attention to the way that we present ourselves in the classroom, specifically taking note of our grammar usage when speaking. At first, I thought this would be a breeze because I have been practicing proper grammar usage for years. However, I had forgotten that I, like many others, struggle with one of the most common speaking mistakes: improper and perpetual usage of the word "like." Because using "like" as a filler-word isn't usually a problem for people when they write, but occurs almost unconsciously when they speak, most people don't even realize how much they say it until they are consciously trying not to say it.

After paying close attention to the word "like" for the past two weeks, my classmates and I have begun to notice how difficult it really is for us to speak without it. We have also started to notice who the people are that say "like" exponentially more than others. The purpose of this activity in our English class is to break our bad habits of speech before we go off to college, so that our intelligence isn't undermined by the way we present our ideas. Before I started listening for how many times people say the word "like", it wasn't as obvious to me. However, I can now see how distracting it is and understand that its frequent usage can easily diminish an intelligent idea.

The average person says about 20,000 words per day, so what we say is a big part of who we are. Pay attention to what you are saying. Are the words you choose to use saying what you want them to? Are they saying what you want them to say about yourself? My challenge for you this week is to really listen to yourself when you speak and identify a personal speech problem. Make yourself aware of this problem and take the time to correct it. It won't be easy, but the challenge is well worth the positive effect it will have on your identity.


Say- John Mayer