Personal essay that elucidates your thoughts about the nature of language.

God could have created another way for people to communicate, but he didn’t. He gave us language. Language is an amazing miracle when you think about it: simple sounds and symbols can encapsulate ideas, clarify ideas, vivify ideas. Language allows us to communicate with precision, power, beauty. Though movement, facial expressions, body language contribute to communication, words are needed for defined and precise expression.

Task: Write a 500-word personal essay that elucidates your thoughts about the nature of language. Include specifics details to support your main idea. Some things to think about so that you can form one main idea: 
• Is the study of words necessary to modern society or have we progressed beyond it? 
• Should we have fewer words? Fewer rules? 
• What do the rules of language have to do with clarity of thought and power of expression? 
• Do words actually change the people who read them? 
• Aren’t actions louder than words? 
• Why should anyone care about words?

Requirements:
• 500-word minimum
• One main idea about the nature of language (this is a claim…more about this later!)
• Specific details to support your ideas (this is evidence…more about this later, too!)
• Perfect punctuation
• Intentional word choices (don’t use any old word…find the perfect one for what you want to say)

Nota bene:
• You may use first and second person pronouns (I, we, you) since this is a personal essay.
• Make sure you center your essay around one cohesive thought. If you simply run through the bullet points and write a sentence or two response to each, your essay will be disorganized and ineffective. Think about the one main idea and then support it. To that end, you may not be able to address every bullet point.