Students will have to use language all their lives, whether they are signing off on stock investments, guiding airplanes to land, or writing the next great novel. Language is the stuff of communication, and English happens to be the most commonly used language in the world. However, Canadian schools do not adequately prepare young people to use the English language, and teachers who teach the English language also lack adequate basic language skills. In this article, the author expresses her distress over what appears to her to be a disintegration of language skills, and discusses the ways in which text messaging and the introduction of French immersion programs in Canadian schools have impacted the English language.