Friends, English is not the point. 

Yes, that’s right, you just read that, you heard it sub-vocalized in your head, and now it is there repeatedly being affirmed to you:

I am telling you that language is not the point. 

People often think it’s the point; they think that somehow all of these words that we see on the screen and that you will write in your exam papers are at the end of it the reason that we are here. 

It is with that logic that they will conceive so many different forms of what excellent writing, excellent sentences, and incredible essays are, believing that this excellent writing literally just means fine-tuning, optimizing, and improving the sentences to be more than what they can be – to hope for the very best. 

But that is the wrong target really – for the target is actually something very different. 

Think about it. 

Why do we even write? 

For many of you, it’s to do well in an exam. 

For some of you (if I am lucky), it is for the added pleasure of self-expression. 

In all cases, whether we like it or not, it is to be read and to be understood by another human being. 

Whatever the situation and whatever the context, we are all grasping to create things that others will understand, feel, and see ideally in the same way that we see —  to raise up questions in the ways that we would raise to cause others to think in the way that we might think; in a very real way, writing is just one of many methods of delivery that we can use to put in a message or reshape other people’s minds – both of which are happening even as you read this piece. 

But this is not intuitive to a lot of people. It is far more common that people would think that you would accomplish good writing by putting together the most complicated, verbose, and flowery words that you can, hoping and praying to yourself that somehow something incredible will come out. 

But really, in my mind, that is a little bit like putting lipstick on a farm animal. 

It doesn’t transform the farm animal into Marilyn Monroe in her prime. 

No, you just get a farm animal covered in lipstick. 

We cannot create a Marilyn Monroe with words, but certainly we can create the image though.

Lips ruby red, velvet sky; purple eyeshadow, fourth of July. A billowing white dress lifts up by the summer breeze. A subtle wink, a smile – the iconic mole brushing just past vision as the world turns sepia, her short hair from golden turns into fadations of white; the aged grace of eternity dances in the spotlights, dancing along to your invitation among the hundreds; your hand, her hand, a bond with destiny – and here it is: the memory of what was like to be forever young. 

Go ahead and put that into ChatGPT or any AI image generator. It’ll be fun to see what you get. Share it in the comments! 

What was the point of that? 

The point of that was to show that it’s not about using fancy words – Although, sure. Perhaps I could have used slightly more fancy words compared to what I initially had – But whatever the types of words I used, the point of what I was doing would remain and so would the architecture; it was to create an image in your head from which you could not escape, to shape your reality in a specific way such that you could not help but construct the image that I wanted you to construct because you had read that particular sequence of words.

That is just one example of how language can be a means to an end. It is so in an infinitude of other situations as well, when I want to be delivered. Is to persuade you of something. 

To make you believe in something.

 To convince you to buy any number of things. (Including the books and guides on this site as well as a premium membership!). 

…And to ultimately deliver any number of desired outcomes and A-star included, when you follow the rules, understand the game, and can create something meaningful – Not with language as the end goal, but as a by-product of the meaningful project that you aspire to achieve and design through the orchestration of your words. 

As we come to the end of this post, I am conscious that even these words are but a means to an end – and in my mind, I hope that whatever the ultimate end might be, that at least a part of it was that it helped you to get a little further than you were in your appreciation for language and what it can give. 

Hello everyone, how’s everything going? Today’s piece is a little different, because I’m asking you to actually just pause and wake up for a bit. 

Ready? 

Please learn how to write. 

I am saying this right now not because you don’t know how to put words down on paper. In fact, even as we speak, some of you are probably thinking to write out an angry text or maybe even a comment down below about how this is a silly post because you already know how to write. It’s very simple. How could you even think that this is a problem? Well, as a matter of fact, it is. 

When I say “please learn how to write,” I don’t mean that you put together one or two or three sentences. I mean, please learn how to use words to create a well-constructed piece of work that persuades me that you are able to sustain a line of inquiry, discussion, argument, or description while understanding how to create whatever effect it is that you want. And when I say this, I don’t mean learn how to prompt. Learn how to question, learn how to craft prompts that’s important too. But there is something far more important I want you to learn: how to use your brain to manually put words together and understand how to craft not only sentences but also supporting points, elaborations, and explanations. And I want you to be able to do it consistently and well. 

Now I’m saying this partly because of what’s been on everyone’s minds: AI. There’s a good chance that before you were reading this piece, you were using ChatGPT. You were writing beautiful questions one after another, entertaining your curiosity and then contemplating what you would ask about next. Some of you might have even been making people think that you are secretly geniuses as you pull out assignment after assignment from the bowels of the earth, perfectly formatted, written, constructed, created. 

I’m here to tell you that’s wonderful. But I’m also here to ask you: Are you really learning how to write? 

Is your brain discovering what patterns of words work well together? 

Are you deepening your understanding of what words to place next to each other? 

Do you know what will accomplish the goal of what you’re trying to do, and what will reach inside the mind of the person that you’re speaking to, whether on the page, in real life, or in any other situation where you’re crafting language from letters and bringing together ideas from the words that they form? 

If the answer is no even when you shut your eyes and try to imagine the words that should come to mind when you think about the richness of our universe, seriously, we have a serious problem here. 

When you have started to reach a satisfactory state, this is what I imagine that you will see. 

The right words will appear in your own mind organically and at the right time, and your brain should have a process to bring your words forward one after another into the construction of logical meaning. 

In time, even if the correct words aren’t there, you’ll be able to understand why they are in the wrong place and rearrange patterns that are more accurate to the vision that you wish to accomplish. 

That is the foundation of accurate, articulate, and precise writing—something that arises organically from you without a need for aid, assistance, or help in any form. 

Before we end, here’s an important thing to clarify. I am not saying that you should not use ChatGPT. 

I am not saying that we should deny AI, rail against technology, fight against the machine, and set to fire a million Midjourney and ChatGPT images while asking the very same ChatGPT how to use a sledgehammer to destroy an NVIDIA H100 after having learned that these are the computers that power our modern technological generative architecture.

Rather what I am saying is that when we use technology, it is ideally to enhance our innate human capabilities, allowing us to develop skills that we otherwise may never have developed. 

Of course, as this technology advances, I am sure that there will be many people who will discover that it will allow for people to create things that they had never imagined, and it is in the sweet consequence of the apparently polished essay that the AI detector could not distinguish that they will measure and validate the worth of what they were able to create for themselves. 

In time, as technology progresses, they may not distinguish between any works generated with AI and what the human mind was able to construct. 

Given the way that technology operates, perhaps it is a far-off dream to assume that somehow our technology would just mysteriously fade away, disappear, be eclipsed into darkest night. 

But all I can say is given what humans have been and are able to develop themselves to be, I think that it is a manifest shame to let our abilities crinkle to the wayside merely because we thought that there was no space or role for the supercomputer inside our heads. 

Hello everyone!

Those of you out there on premium memberships, here’s a small update just for you!

Your descriptive and narrative composition banks have been updated to October-November 2024.

Enjoy, and I hope that you’ll enjoy the examples. If you don’t already have a premium membership, you can go right ahead and get one over here and get access to all of our resources.

To supercharge your FLE success, don’t wait and sign up today!

Yours,
Victor.