Re: Article: Gen Y's written skills fall short

BMJ wrote:
Sharon wrote:

<snip>

Honestly, these guys seem less technically literate than students of 10 years ago.



Call me cynical, but I'm surprised this is an issue. When I was in school in the 70's-80's, I remember the teachers telling us how important it was to be able to communicate well orally and in writing. I believed them and learned how to write business letters and such. Although I took pride in how well I could communicate in writing, they had me a bit intimidated, thinking I was going to mark myself as being a young person just by my writing style.
I was very shocked when I got my first computer programming job and saw that very few of the managers - the people running the company - could write to save their lives. It was quite easy to tell that the outgoing correspondence was cleaned up by secretaries because the internal memos looked like they'd been written by 8-year-olds. It was the same in several other jobs I took after that, also. It looked more like the way to climb the corporate ladder was to forget how to spell or construct a coherent sentence.


I used to teach a course in heat transfer and thermodynamics, which included two lab sessions. I sometimes penalized my students for not spelling properly, particularly since they had access to spell checkers. Often, the response would consists of wailing and whining that I wasn't teaching an English course.

I had similar reactions when I did the same in the drafting and CAD courses I used to teach.

I teach a junior level lab course an emphasis is placed on writing high-quality lab reports. After the first report, all other reports incur a 10% penalty and get handed back for rework if I find more than one spelling, typographical or grammatical error. There is always some initial grumbling, but that is what I was brought up with and today with all the spelling and grammar checkers there is no excuse for such errors. As long as the department is united on this kind of issue, students shape up quickly.
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