writing skills - why can't people write??

Can I stick up for the business majors out there.....

In many ways, it is looked at a bit like a science, rather than a liberal art.  As long as you can support your point in a logical manner - job done.  

Most of the essays I wrote at Uni got the point of the assignment across, but certainly weren't works of literary genius.  I actually really struggled in the basic English literature class I took freshman year.  My senior year I took a "Writing for Business Majors" and it was by far the MOST useful class I took in 4 years.  I had no idea how to write with flourish before that class, or how to use exotic punctuation.  I just think some majors don't put the same emphasis on proper grammar, etc.  

Now as to why people are just horrible at writing....
I blame it on the internet.  The generation of people starting Uni now have grown up with email, texts and chat.  People are getting lazier and lazier in their communication.   I think that we as an on-line community can help combat this linguistic laziness by not responding to people who don't post using accepted forms of writing.    Half kidding, but it does grate on every single nerve I have when a person's first post is something like this:

"i have a problem. i want to live in the UK how can i do this and whats the whether like.  do u have any suggestions 4 cool places to hangout."

That to me is unintelligible and yet we continue to respond to these types of requests.  If society accepts this as a proper form of communication, then it is no wonder that it transgresses into their academic life.   Don't get me wrong, a spelling mistake or forget a comma in a post, no big deal.  Please, please, please use fullstops (periods)!!!!

(by osmosis?)

Tee hee! Indeed!

I actually need to ask my husband what his own experience is as he is an excellent scientific writer (he's British BTW) but I'm fairly sure he did do other writing is his educational career.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen more than my fair share of crap writing in the US. I think it's just the proportion of it here that has surprised me. Out of 106 essay we only gave one a 'commendation'. That's pretty bad. I think it does relate to the the early specialization the UK system can encourage here (as you noted).

Karin, thanks for that perspective. To clarify, our dept isn't looking for literary genius ... but as you pointed out, being able to write with a bit of flourish, being able to support your points in a logical manner, this is what is key. Footnoting/citation is hardly rocket science. And the internet generation need only google it to find out how to do it!!

Now as to why people are just horrible at writing....
I blame it on the internet.  The generation of people starting Uni now have grown up with email, texts and chat.  People are getting lazier and lazier in their communication.   I think that we as an on-line community can help combat this linguistic laziness by not responding to people who don't post using accepted forms of writing.     Half kidding, but it does grate on every single nerve I have when a person's first post is something like this:

"i have a problem. i want to live in the UK how can i do this and whats the whether like.  do u have any suggestions 4 cool places to hangout."

That to me is unintelligible and yet we continue to respond to these types of requests.  If society accepts this as a proper form of communication, then it is no wonder that it transgresses into their academic life.   Don't get me wrong, a spelling mistake or forget a comma in a post, no big deal.  Please, please, please use fullstops (periods)!!!!

"i have a problem. i want to live in the UK how can i do this and whats the whether like.  do u have any suggestions 4 cool places to hangout."

 

From an American point of view this would be no different than trying to compare community college to a major university.

I disagree. I've gone for four different colleges (one private liberal arts college, community college, and two very good state universities) and can say without doubt that the writing ability of my peers at community college was equal to that of those at university.

Given that the first two years of university are one of the things taught at community college many students from there go onto university. It is worth remembering that a number of them are not there because of an academic failing, but simply because it is much cheaper to do the first two years at community college and then transfer to a university.

I think my biggest challenge with the writing is how colleagues can go all round the houses before they get to their point. Hello! Please be more concise. People can have a habit of writing like they talk.

I am supervising a student and have had to proof colleagues' work and it just kills me sometimes.

People can have a habit of writing like they talk.

Maybe that's partly where the problem lies - I did a course last year during my masters entitled 'Scientific Communication' - where we were taught how to write a paper/thesis, how to get it published etc. and one of the points was that you should write the way you would talk if you were explaining the content to someone else (i.e. don't use fancy words or raid the thesaurus, just write it down)... although this is assuming that you are capable of getting to the point quickly when you talk  .

I don't have a business degree - but I don't understand how you could have one and not be expected to write well. How can you sell something, or manage people, if you can't get your point across clearly and concisely?

Then again, I work in marketing.

I used to work with scientists from many different countries, editing their presentations and proposals. Their US managers were complaining about how difficult it was to understand their writing and communicate with them.

Their writing tended to be very confusing and disorganized. In many cases, I couldn't follow their thought process at all. After many long and heated discussions with my clients (and after spending a year in S. Korea) I finally realized that in some cases it was a cultural thing.

In Korea, for example, one is taught to be very vague at the beginning - leading your audience off track is okay. Then finish with a "surprise" bang at the end. This is obviously much different to the way I was taught to write.

Are your students all native English speakers? Just a thought.

The bulk of them are British, yes.

I just spoke to my husband about this. He learned scientific writing during his undergrad degree at Derby. But he also confirmed that he did not write essays like I would expect to see prior to Uni when he was taking English, etc. But he did say that if he were an undergrad now, he would know that there would be ways out there to find out how to do it via Uni support services, library support, etc.

I think the most impressive paper I ever wrote was 11th grade AP American History.  I worked my butt off.  It was a 50 page paper and a huge bibliography all based on original research in my local area's medical history.  It took five months to complete.  After that I was pretty confident.  I am sure the grammar wasn't perfect though.  My teacher was a bear!

On the other hand a friend went to the Fame school in NYC (whatever it is really called) and he didn't know how to write a paragraph.  He studied in Scotland with me and was taking a basic English course.   He needed serious help.

I don't know about the UK, but I know that the number of essays I had to write depended greatly upon the course. I had an excellent writing teacher in my junior year of high school and we were not allowed to write "dead words" and she had very strict standards. I did well in that class. I moved, later that same year, to a new school in MA and I struggled in the English class there because they were looking for completely different things, and the writing was not up to the caliber of what I learned in TN. They had these things called F.C.A.s that I was never taught and, therefore didn't understand.

With the amount of writing I had to do, I should know immediately how to do a bibliography and properly quote, but I had to learn both regular (can't think of what it's called) and A.P.A formats and I get confused between the two of them.

As for the library I think that is a general college/uni thing now. My friends and I rarely went to the library, I think I can count on one hand the number of times I went because we used things like Lexis-Nexus, which are journal articles and you can do it with some TV or music in the background and don't have to worry about the library's hours. We did learn how to pick out a reliable website.

My students are writing all the time and they are in second grade. They already know how to do transition words and phrases. They are also learning to do research.

DH is a horrible writer. He writes in the passive tense all the time, uses "Be and Being" far too much and doesn't know the difference between certain spellings. He totally relies on spell checker everywhere he is and that is not foolproof. He did not go to college or Uni, in my opinion, the british system really didn't teach him much except that he liked computers.

I am the brainy one and have found that my writing from the US did not quite meet the expectations of the lecturers here in the UK when I went to do my MA in International Studies at Leeds Uni. I am not a big fan of long essays or writing in general, but I think I produce grammatically correct and flowing work. The whole primary resource thing really threw me when I got to the graduate level. No one really explained that clearly to me, it was just expected. Now, for someone that had just been getting good grades for what I produced in undergrad, why would I expect a difference in grad school?  I did pass, but realized I am not a writer, but I can certainly produce decent stuff.

DH's son, now 16, is not very well educated either. He was a "behavioral" problem so now he goes to class 1/2 a day a week and does work experience and job training. I don't really see how that solves the problem. Perhaps the UK needs to really think about the school system they have allowing children to leave at 16 if they want with very little or no qualifications.

This whole specialization of students in the UK baffles me as well - Balmerhon has a point about being more marketable. I got a degree in both spanish and business to make my spanish more useful, and I know I have a ton of options open to me if I ever needed to get back into the corporate world of work. These students need to diversify.

My daughter is currently doing her A levels. She writes tonnes of essays - has at minimum of one a week due. She also is writing a large research paper- she has been frustrated trying to find out the preferred method of (okay drawing a blank here since I have been out of school tooo long now!---) footnotes, bibliography etc. She found in the US they were very specific about how they would like papers layed out but here they are more vague and don't seem as concerned about specific layouts.

Her A levels are in Psychology, Philosophy and History so I am sure she does a lot more writing than here peers that are taking more scientific courses.

Given that the first two years of university are one of the things taught at community college many students from there go onto university. It is worth remembering that a number of them are not there because of an academic failing, but simply because it is much cheaper to do the first two years at community college and then transfer to a university.

My daughter will be doing this.  It will save her paying back at least $15,000 in loans.  I know a lot of kids in the US doing this for the same reason.