1 If I am the only parent who still corrects his child's English, then perhaps my son is right. To him, I am a tedious oddity : a father he is obliged to listen to and a man absorbed in the rules of grammar, which my son seems allergic to. 2 I think I got serious about this only recently when I ran into one of my former students, fresh from an excursion to Europe . " How was it? " I asked, full of earnest anticipation . 3 She nodded three or four times, searched the heavens for the right words, and then exclaimed , " It was, like, whoa ! " 4 And that was it. The civilization of Greece and the glory of Roman architecture were captured in a condensed non - statement . My student' s " whoa ! " was exceeded only by my head- shaking distress . 5 There are many different stories about the downturn in the proper use of English. Surely students should be able to distinguish between their/there/they're or the distinctive difference between complimentary and complementary . They unfairly bear the bulk of the criticism for these knowledge deficits because there is a sense that they should know better.