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Subject:Re: The Problem with STC From:"John Fleming" <johnf -at- ecn -dot- ab -dot- ca> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 10 Dec 2000 13:24:16 -0700
| Subject: Re: The Problem with STC
| From: Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>
| Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2000 15:52:21 -0800 (PST)
| X-Message-Number: 9
| "Michael West" wrote...
| > My own finding after thirty years in IT and technical
| > communications (twenty of them in the US) is that in
| > this industry, communications skills are far rarer and
| > far harder to acquire than programming skills.
| I couldn't disagree more. EVERYBODY has to take English or language
classes in
| college and high school. Only a very few take programming classes.
There is
| just a lot of poor communicators out there.
While we all take English or language classes in college and high
school, all those courses do not guarantee that people can write.
Many years ago, back in my own days as an engineering student, we all
took a course called Introduction to Engineering. To pass the course,
we needed to write five one-page letters to the dean on the topics
discussed in class. The letters were graded, not just on content, but
also on grammar and spelling. One third of the students *failed* the
course that year. (I passed.) We'd all taken those high school
English classes (even the foreign students had to pass the TOEFL to
gain admission to the university).
In an attempt to rectify the problem, the university added a half-year
first year English course to the engineering curriculum the following
year.
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