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I believe that the internet is changing us by simply improving our vocabulary.

I remember when I was younger, my mother would sit me down to read a book, and she would place a dictionary right next to it. Every time I came across a word I didn't know, she would have me look up the word in the dictionary and keep a journal of all the words I learned. I absolutely hated it, and often times I just refused to do it. I hated the dictionary. Every time I had to look up a word, it took forever, and I would have to go through the alphabet a million times in my head to figure out where in the dictionary to look. Looking back on my childhood, I don't think this helped improve my vocabulary very much. I would just skip the words I didn't know.

I wasn't alone with my distaste of dictionaries, though. When I was in the third grade, my teacher got me and my whole class a christmas gift. We were all excited, but that excitement faded quickly when we realized she had gotten each of us a thesaurus and a dictionary. It was very kind of her, and sweet that she went out of her way, but they just sucked! She then made us have dictionary contests to see who could find a word the fastest, to get us more excited.  I do not recall my classmates using them throughout the  year.

Fast- forward to the internet. Any time I come across a word I don't know, I am just a quick Command-C and Command-V away from learning the definition. It is so helpful and eliminates the dread of learning. I also use the Microsoft thesaurus on every single paper I turn in, to diversify my sentences.

I acknowledge people who might believe the opposite. That we use the internet as a crutch and now don't have to learn new words/ spelling because of the easy access and because of the abbreviations that are constantly used online. I have a couple things to say about that:

(1) One of my very smart middle school teachers once told my class that  spelling is a useless skill, and a waste of time to learn. She also predicted that one day spelling wont be taught, along with physically writing. It is a wild prediction, but I do agree with the fact that spelling is somewhat of a useless skill. Spell check. Elementary schools should skip the spelling lessons, and start teaching math and science much earlier.

(2) Our use of abbreviations is a testament to how efficient we have become.

So, finally, I would like to thank the internet for improving mankind in this area.