Posted on 08/27/2007 3:30:11 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Edited on 08/27/2007 3:34:11 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
A generation ago, employers were still lamenting the poor technical abilities of their entry-level workers. Well, that
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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I was looking at facebook profiles the other day and came across a mid 30s woman. She wrote about her training and claimed to be looking for a job as a grade school teacher. The caption for her photo.... “Photo tooken in 2000”.
As has been mine. Some of the ‘’resumes’’ that cross my desk simply have to be seen to be believed.
The best thing we ever did for our son was to hire a writing/composition tutor when he was junior high age (we homeschooled, but I didn’t feel confident teaching composition.)
She taught him well, because throughout college, he could whip out papers and always received A’s. He took his GMAT test and did very well, but the writing section was the easiest part for him.
This was a child who had, IMHO, no natural ability since at the age of 11, his sentences consisted of about 5 words. But the tutor taught him so much about composition, and the 3 years of payments to that tutor was probably the best investment we made throughout his education.
With the liberals in charge of most higher education, they won't dare let their students utilize critical thinking because the liberals would be exposed for the liars they are.
-Traveler
I don’t agree with this. Technology and the internet has strengthened the English skills of younger workers, not weakened them.
Entry level workers? Part of my husband’s job is vetting documents (written by “professionals”, mind you) for informational/legal accuracy prior to distribution to various Fortune 500 companies. About 80% then get passed on to me for major proofreading (unpaid, but it gets the hubby home early). I have never seen such abysmal grammar skills in my life. In some documents I see no grammar skills at all.
I am only a high school graduate, albeit a very well read one. Does an MBA mean nothing, anymore? Don’t they make people write papers in college? It’s disgraceful. I want to go back to school once the kids are older, but I’m not sure what I’m going to get out of it judging by the graduates I’ve been seeing the last three years.
Has to be the case!! Did you check out the you tube of the miss teenage blond in South Carolina???? They no how 2 rd map! LOL
Strunk, William, Jr. 1918. The Elements of Style
CONTENTS
I finally saw it when Brit Hume aired it on his show. Her reply was jawdropping.
In public school, he would have been farmed off to the $pecial Ed cla$$. Not that his writing skills would have improved, but a few educrats would have felt better about themselves, confident in how hard they supposedly tried [at unlimited taxpayer expense].
Technology and the internet has have strengthened the English skills of younger workers, not weakened them.
Sorry... ;-)
And I beg to differ. I'm often appalled at the poor written communications skills of even supposedly well-educated people these days. I've done helpdesk work most of my adult life, and if I had a dime for every unintelligible message, I'd have lots of pocket change.
More jobs 4 us w/BAs in ENG.
Do you correct them in red ink and send them back?
Smart kids will gravitate toward the websites where real language and ideas are used, possibly strengthening their English skills, but they’re probably the ones who would have known how to write anyway. The rest are surrounded by peers who write nothing but text-message pidgin and have no incentive to do otherwise. If anything they just reinforce functional illiteracy in one another.
I hate to break it to you, but the public schools abhor proper spelling, reading, and English grammar...in high school and college (most of the time but not always). Come to think of it, they also dislike teaching such useful things as geography and personal finance.
I survived because my mom was a journalist and English literature major.
My mom would get solicitations to run the family business ads in the paper, etc. On more than one occasion I remember her marking up their letters with LOTS of red ink and reply “no thanks”! And this was 30 years ago.
One of the best things my parents ever did for me was move to a town with excellent schools (late 50’s - western Chicago suburbs). After three years of French in 7th to 9th grades, I then took Latin for three years of HS and one year at IU. Add in English, speech, literature, history (BA), and I could hold my own if writing was the requirement.
Then I was a Marine for 28 years. The writing skills I attribute to attending Mr. Paris’ Latin class at Hinsdale Township High School Central in 1966 held me in good stead for a lot of years.
Semper Fi,
In any case, as you may know, I'm a (haha) professional writer. The only correction markup I know is the one that (most) publishers use, which would be largely incomprehensible to anyone who has never seen it before. Therefore, correcting these abysmally poor resumes is pretty much a non-starter.
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