“If you use more than three ‘be’ verbs in any assignment you hand in to me, your grade for that assignment will suffer.” This daunting statement came from my Honors English teacher when I was a junior in high school. She was obsessed with the idea of eliminating passive voice in our writing because passive voice would make us sound unpolished. Of course at this time I couldn’t understand this explicit set of rules she was demanding of us considering I had never heard of ‘be’ verbs in my life. She then explained that ‘be’ verbs are any form of the verb ‘to be’ and included ‘is, am, was, were, been, being,’ and of course ‘be.’
This rule seemed fickle to me and my attitude did not change much as the year went on. I found myself spending forty-five minutes scouring over each paper, checking to make sure that my paper was free of these evil verbs that aimed to annihilate my paper. I hated how that idea remained in my head as I wrote my papers for that class. I hated it more when it began towering over my thoughts for the papers I wrote in other subjects. I began always thinking, thinking, about ‘be’ verb, ‘be’ verb! I could not let my writing flow naturally and often my sentences became confusing because I was in a constant tango with ‘be’ verbs and like in the dance, I didn’t want to make a wrong step and end up fumbling over someone’s toes. In this case, I didn’t want to trip into a lower grade.
When I look back at the explicit rules that my Honors English teacher set, I find myself just as frustrated as I was when I attended her class. Why does this example of prescriptive grammar invade my life still? Even now as I write this paper I am aware of all of the ‘be’ verbs I have used, and find myself counting these four years later. This had a significant affect on my writing style in high school, and now in college I also find that this pervasive force still exists in my writing. Just now I stopped the last sentence and started again to avoid saying ‘is’. While I realize that this is a somewhat picky aspect to pay attention to, I also understand that my writing has improved because of that year, and that I know ways to make my sentences more powerful by avoiding passivity. However, I believe that this concept had too much emphasis in my classroom and that made me feel hindered in my own writing; so while I agree that eliminating the ‘be’ verbs helped me try a new style of writing, I also strongly believe that if these verbs aren’t distracting in a piece of writing then they are alright to use. Mrs. Edwards feels differently, and that’s ok, and I realize why she thought it was so important. I don’t agree completely with her, but I do see how that information shaped my language use.
My experiences with rules and regulations in our language dates back further than my junior year of high school. In fact I have received subliminal and overt rules of the language since elementary school. These rules didn’t only apply to writing either; there was a whole other set of rules for reading in elementary school as well.
In third grade my teacher, Mr. Lyons, made it a point to ensure that if we stumbled when reading we would keep going. The implicit rule here was to keep going and to get the gist of the sentence instead of worrying about each word individually. He told us to “Look around the word to find the meaning” This proved to be a useful reading rule for us because it taught us how to find the main focus of the writing instead of worrying and being self-conscious about our little slip-ups. It also helped us figure out the words that we didn’t know.
I know exactly why he did this: he wanted us to be able to feel comfortable with reading and comfortable in knowing that everyone makes mistakes when reading. If we can get the main idea out of it, then a couple mistakes aren’t really that important and looking at the context of the sentence will help us fix our mistakes eventually.
This concept of reading through your mistakes helped me in eighth grade as well because Mr. Parent had the same philosophy. In fact he reminded us that we were in the top reading class because we knew this rule and applied it to our reading habits. I found this rule extremely helpful when I was developing as a reader because it gave me enough confidence to make a mistake and not dwell on it. I know that I made many mistakes the first few times I read aloud. I didn’t pause when I was supposed to, I read straight through periods instead of stopping etc. I struggled. I struggled and I got it right. I got it right through my own mistakes. Mr. Lyons and Mr. Parent realized that we would make the mistakes and learn from them on our own and that is why they set up this hidden rule in their classrooms, I am sure of it. They remind me of Rose in that way because he always talks about how making mistakes is the best way to learn and I’m starting to understand.
Overall these rules and regulations from my past education have led me to being the writer that I am today in college. I find myself still worrying about my ‘be’ verbs and while I think it is dumb now to waste my time on eliminating them, they did make me focus on my own language use in writing and that has proven to be very valuable in college writing. I also find myself doing the reading rules that Mr. Lyons set up for me, although he didn’t call it a rule. I read through my mistakes and recover from them instead of getting overwhelmed by them and I look through to find the meaning that all of the words create together instead of getting caught up in single words that may give me trouble.
