English is typically the only subject that is required for all four years of high school. Have you wondered why this is? Here is an actual conversation between two sophomores in the hallway at the beginning of the school year who were (probably unintentionally) wrestling with this question:

Student A: What English class are you in?

Student B: English 2.

Student A: What’s that?

Student B: Don’t know. Same as English 1, but one harder?

You might conclude that the two students really don’t know much about why they’ve been studying English, but their conversation may also reflect your own feelings about English class: you do most of the same things each year (read books, write essays, give speeches), but the process just gets a little harder and you probably read different books.

So, what is English for, then?

[I]t is vital to remember that information — in the sense of raw data — is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.
—Arthur C. Clarke

And why is English so important that, if you have grown up in the United States, you have likely studied it every year for the past ten years? One easy answer is that it is essential that you learn to read, write, and speak effectively so that you can function as a literate citizen in society. You need to be able to fill out job applications, read and understand the key political issues in order to cast an informed vote in elections, and write a check to pay your taxes. Countries with high literacy rates among their citizens tend to be more productive and stable than countries with lower literacy rates. In other words, by studying English, you are able to practice the full definition of literacy from the beginning of this chapter: “the ability to use available symbol systems [. . .] for the purposes of making and communicating meaning and knowledge.” An English class gives you lots of opportunities to make and communicate knowledge through particular symbol systems, including the written and spoken word, film, artwork, and other types of images. The study of English is a mental exercise for making meaning of the world around us and for sharing our ideas with others inside and outside of the classroom. It is also training in a specific academic literacy (the study of language and literature), but in the process you will be sharpening your mind so that picking up other literacies becomes increasingly easy.