Of very great importance to college students is the fact that language is a vital shaping force in their personal, social, academic, and professional lives. Every time they read or listen, they are using English: knowledge about facts, ideas, values, and human experience comes to them largely through the spoken and written word. Every time they speak or write-in the classroom, in meetings, in the college newspaper, to friends-they are using English; by means of words persuade others, impress them, inform them, share experiences with them, get along with them. The language that students use shows their education, their information, their manners, their temper, their taste, their tact, their judgment, their sense of humor, and their attitude toward themselves and toward others. Their skill in understanding and using English is of the greatest significance in their intellectual growth, in the friends they make, in the kind of person they marry, in the position they achieve and hold

Source: Using English Effectively (Birk and Birk)