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A hurdle for those learning English as a second language is the tendency of native speakers to disregard the rules of the language and its precision in meaning. For instance, a common slang term which is perhaps the epitome of imprecision is: ‘I’m feeling some type of way.’ This is bad for both the native speakers and the learners of English as a second language. The reduction of words in favor of casual language often erodes the significance of those same words and lends further territory to confusion. For this reason it is important for grammar to be precise in order for comprehension of the language to be streamlined within speech. Many students of foreign languages bewail verb tense drilling as it often conjures depictions of constant repetition with little meaning and even more limited use. The significance of the exercises is often lost in a controlled and closed setting, like a classroom. Although, without constant verb tense drilling, it would be very difficult to conjure up those verbs at a moment’s notice without having spent much time with them prior. In other words, students can grumble and groan as much as they like during class time as to the insignificance of verb tenses. However, when these same students are pressed to converse in that same language with those same words, they will often have a difficult time recalling those words and those tenses of which they have never practiced. The precision with verbs tenses in speech is just as important as the breadth of the words used. As with the example in the first paragraph, the listener is meant to understand which way the speaker is meant to be feeling by the context of the story being told or the situation present. This proposes that the speaker and the listener are so in tune that the phrase need not be said in the first place (if one knows the way one is feeling then why say how or that one is feeling at all?). Consequently, whenever there is a distance between the speaker and the listener either, culturally, linguistically, or within narration, a question often follows this phrase: ‘How were you feeling?’ In first trying to streamline the conversation the speaker is often asked to further describe how they were/are feeling. Ultimately he confuses his listeners and elongates explanation by using incorrect sentence constructions. Instead of using ‘some type of way’ the speaker could have used any number of adverbs to describe his or her emotional state, both enhancing the clarity of their description and the understanding of their listeners. In order to further amplify understanding, the whole of any sentence requires any number of constructions which both portend the intention of the speaker and their inflection of the words being said to the listener. In order to carry verbal description to this end, with a language such as English, it is paramount that those using the language are familiar with all sentence structures available. English has a fascinating ability to add a vast level of temporal spaces within speech. The five conditional tenses of English allow for a whole range of those possibilities to be negated or denied, in both the present and the past, and then going as far as to represent possibilities for the future. These conditionals—along with reported speech and direct speech—layer speech with an understanding of both the temporal and intentional aspects of the words being said. Without these key grammatical constructions, inflection and intention would be reduced and the description of possibility would not be portrayed. To be precise in grammar is the bedrock of understanding the true meaning of what is being said. Many complain that a speaker is too fast or too slow, but this complaint is all the more exacerbated when the speaker is being imprecise in their speech. Dispelling confusion, after all, is one of the main reasons why we have language in the first place. If we do not communicate clearly and correctly then we would never be able to understand who, what, where, when, or why anything is happening. We would all, ultimately, end up ‘feeling some type of way.’
