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Garter Snakes and Good Writing Skills
By
Bob Orrick
The headline read, "Engineers forced to learn how to write." A sub-head had this quote, "We get complaints from industry all the time." The opening paragraph of the article that appeared in the National Post of Wednesday, May 28, 2003 was, "Undergraduate engineering faculties, home to some of Canada's cleverest technical minds, are finally forcing students to learn how to write."
How could this be? How could it happen that "some of Canada's cleverest technical minds" do not know how to write?
As a person who is in almost daily contact with students from elementary school, high school or university levels, I do not find the above question about writing ability surprising. It seems that today, in elementary and high schools, writing - with its attendant correct spelling, punctuation, and syntax - is not high on the list of academic skills to be learned. As a backup to that comment, I know of at least one human resources director in a private language school who weekly receives résumés and covering letters that end up in the gash basket simply because they are poorly worded. The irony is that the résumé's are from teachers seeking a position at the school. One wonders how such individuals passed from high school to university then on into the real world without the basic skill of writing. The headline mentioned above does not come as a shock although perhaps it should.
An accompanying article shows two examples of high school students' writing. The first sample is deemed 'poor, whereas the second is marked 'excellent.' The former is level 1 and the latter level 5.
Sample 1.
People of Canada be awore that May is Snake emergence month and please help them cross the highways don't do this for me do it for the sake of the snakes and remember there are about 15000 of them and there garter snakes so the not poisonis. Your not going to be payed though do it for the love of the snakes and please if you don't like snakes do it anyway so they don't get squashed by cars so please … [At this point, the extract falls off.]
Sample 2.
The Daily Sun May 3, 2002
Guarding the Garters
It is "Snake Emergence Month" in Manitoba, but this year our slithering friends are going to hit some heavy traffic.
Dens containing over 15,000 garter snakes, will be emerging to begin their migration routes to breeding grounds. However, one migration route crosses a major … [Again, the extract falls off.]
Sample one contains basic errors that reflect how the writer speaks. As with many people, including high school students, the writer of this piece runs his thoughts together into a long sentence. Clearly, the writer has not been taught the description of a sentence and what a sentence needs to qualify as a sentence. Moreover, the writer makes a basic pronoun antecedent error. Additionally, necessary commas are missing. Spelling obviously is not at the top of this student's agenda of important items to be learned.
The second sample was marked 'excellent' despite two flaws. First, the writer placed an unnecessary comma after 'Manitoba' and in the second paragraph began a sentence with the conjunction 'however.' The word 'however' adds nothing to the sentence and ought to have been omitted. The writer obviously intended to use 'however' as a transition word between the two ideas expressed in the two sentences. The difference between the level 1 and the level 5 samples is striking.
Back to the engineers having to learn how to write.
An associate dean of engineering at UBC in Vancouver said, "We get complaints from industry all the time. Engineers don't know how to write."
Based on the feedback the university received from industry, UBC introduced a scheme to drill students on the communication skills engineers use on the job, such as how to write a project proposal or an environmental impact statement.
A quote from the article: "The accreditation arm of the Canadian Council of Professional Engineers has always required that students pass a handful of English and humanities courses during their four-year-university career, but, students typically see the courses as a break from their gruelling technical courses and do not take them seriously.
"By keeping the new technical writing courses within the faculty of engineering, … hopes students will be more inclined to appreciate their value."
It would appear that UBC has taken a positive step toward correcting students' inability to write. Now, if Canadian high school teachers would only put more emphasis on teaching writing skills perhaps we will not read examples such as sample one above.
Perhaps we should turn back the clock fifty or sixty years to a time when basic spelling, writing and speaking skills were taught in school beginning at an early stage. Today, I see youngsters in early high school who are unable to carry out the tasks my peers and I learned in grade five. Mind you, today's students are exposed to far more general knowledge than we were and perhaps that is a basis for the problems enunciated above. Today, schools teach a broad range of subjects; in a real sense the schools turn out 'generalists' at the expense of 'specialists.' It is not uncommon for a grade 12 student not to have settled on a post-high school career. In order to graduate, they take many 'easy' courses that just pass muster as a requirement for the mandatory provincial examinations need for graduation. By taking 'easy' courses, students slip under the radar of writing well. Some of these students apply to university still not knowing their career choice nor how to write properly; they go to university simply because someone told them that that is the only way to make their mark in the world. Overlooked, often, are technical schools and non-university post-secondary education. The tourist industry is booming in many parts of the world and, despite the current downturn brought on by SARS, it should continue that way into the foreseeable future. One does not need a four-year university degree to be a capable, conscientious member of the hospitality industry. What one does need, however, is a good command of the English language [or French in certain parts of Canada] both spoken and written.
All of the foregoing educational information is based on British Columbia. Other provinces might differ in their approach to spelling, writing and speaking.
If we all concentrate, we might be able to get those garter snakes across the major highway and to their breeding ground; and then we can all rest easy at night.
Bob Orrick is a private tutor of English grammar, literature, poetry and Canadian history to off-shore youngsters. His pupils hail from such places as Taiwan, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Venezuela. He was previously in international marketing, was a ministerial assistant to a provincial cabinet minister, spent a few years as a reporter then editor of a community newspaper and enjoyed a career in the Royal Canadian Navy.
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