Jill K WillisStart when your children string together their first sentences and don’t ever stop correcting the grammar in their spoken words. Young adults with excellent verbal communication skills have a much better chance of achieving their dreams than their peers with sloppy speech.
Give your children the confidence to form their thoughts into spoken words by gently indicating their mistakes and praising them for making their points without error.
As toddlers begin to speak, they’ll mimic you. Easy, peasy to correct them at that age. As kids journey through elementary school they may get tired of the constant reminders, but they’re still at the Mommy’s-so-smart-she-knows-everything age and will usually repeat your corrected sentences without much fuss.
That all ends with the teen years. They don’t want to talk to you, much less listen to your grammar wisdom. You’ll get the eye roll, the big sigh, and the one shoulder shrug. My advice is to persevere with a smile and offer self-deprecating jokes about grammar gaffes you’ve made. Otherwise, they’ll default to texting where all semblance of grammar rules are heartily ignored.
I’m a published author, so you’d think I’d pay closer attention to my speech. I try; I honestly do. But I live in the South, and we love to use certain faulty words like ain’t and y’all for emphasis. And we tend to add extra syllables to our words. I tried to break my kids of these bad habits and mostly succeeded, but I’m still a serial offender.
Since our emergence from COVID, I’ve noticed that the teens I encounter have become lax in their attention to speaking grammar. While it’s inappropriate for me to correct someone else’s child’s grammar, know that if these teens were mine, I’d provide them with the following reminders:
- Don’t use um or uh to gather your thoughts. It’s better to be silent.
- Ensure your nouns agree with your verbs. Plural nouns need plural verbs.
- Use strong words to convey your point. Try to avoid words like things or stuff.
- Complete your sentences. Don’t trail off and make me guess what you’re trying to say.
- Don’t uptalk. That is, don’t end a statement with an upward pitch like it’s a question. If it’s a statement, make it a statement. Uptalk makes you appear less confident.
- Seen and saw are not interchangeable. Seen is the past participle used to form perfect verb tenses, as in I have seen every episode in the hilarious Big Bang Theory series. Saw is past tense, as in I saw you checking out my other blogs.
- Steer away from run-on sentences threaded together with multiple ands.
- Like the written word, don’t overuse adverbs. Really. Yes, really, really.
- Expand your vocabulary. Don’t use the same word over and over.
- Use that to refer to things, groups, animals, and objects. Use who or whom when referring to people.
What grammar error in the spoken word drives you nuts?
Candice Yamnitz
Kristen Gwen
Julia N. White
Love this! I sometimes edit audio and recently had to cut hundreds of “Ums” from one podcast guest’s 45 minute interview. I don’t know if this person, whose career is based on public speaking, is even aware of how often they ummmm. But once you hear it, you can’t unheard it!
Good thing it wasn’t live! 😂
Great advice! I was unaware of how often I say “ummm” until I heard myself on a radio interview. It’s a hard habit to break. Thanks for the reminder.
I catch myself saying “um” all the time. It’s a hard habit to break.