Literacy

[SueEllen]

We use it to detect plagiarism.

If the English is good, makes sense, and has punctuation (especially : or ; ) then it's a near dead cert that it's been stolen off the web.


Particularly when it comes from the non native candidates.

Racist!

[SueEllen]

Are you being ironic? I am surprised by the apparent double standard that communication skills in general and written English in particular are said to be a key element of employability- which I agree with; we regularly get some Captain of industry bemoaning the falling standards in this area and basic numeracy amongst school leavers, and even graduates, while at the same time an increasing proportion of the people I work with at ClientCos are colleagues who don't have English as their first language and whose poor communication skills you would think would render them unemployable. These people seem to get a free pass. I don't get it and I was just wondering what others thought.

School leavers are being trained in a lot of areas varying from the actual skills required to do tasks and soft skills including communication in English.

There as a foreign worker with a poor grasp of English is generally just being trained in communication in English.

Put it this way I've worked alongside people who have had a poor grasp of English and school leavers.

Some of the first group could only work about 7 hours then they would have to run away because even though they were excellent at doing the tasks they needed to do to get the job done, the mental effort required to translate everything left them exhausted.

There as some of the school leavers need supervision every hour or so. If you showed them how to do a task left them to it and came back, with some of them if there was an issue instead of asking for help they would make up something, or wait around and do nothing.

On the other hand I've worked with very good ones of both groups... There isn't one rule for people and it depends on how poor the client's/your recruitment practises are.

[pjclarke]

We use it to detect plagiarism.

If the English is good, makes sense, and has punctuation (especially : or ; ) then it's a near dead cert that it's been stolen off the web.

Oh yes. Amazing what pasting a fragment of text in quotes into Google brings up. Sometimes even that is superfluous; I was once at ClientCo A where I wrote a Best Practice Guide, which got shared with a partner agency, let's call them ProWip. Later I was at ClientCo B who were also partnered with ProWip who offered to share their Best Practices with us, as part of their services ...... you'd think a team of IT Professionals would know to change the 'Author' property in a Word Document they're stealing ....

[Old Greg]

Are you being ironic? I am surprised by the apparent double standard that communication skills in general and written English in particular are said to be a key element of employability- which I agree with; we regularly get some Captain of industry bemoaning the falling standards in this area and basic numeracy amongst school leavers, and even graduates, while at the same time an increasing proportion of the people I work with at ClientCos are colleagues who don't have English as their first language and whose poor communication skills you would think would render them unemployable. These people seem to get a free pass. I don't get it and I was just wondering what others thought.

Try using shorter sentences.

[I just need to test it]

I'm testing a bit of software here, written by gentlemen from foreign climes, and the success message is this:

"Sales Order <nnnnn> would be updated to database".

[mudskipper]

I'm testing a bit of software here, written by gentlemen from foreign climes, and the success message is this:

"Sales Order <nnnnn> would be updated to database".

Followed by "Updation complete"

[pjclarke]

Try using shorter sentences.

Yes. Sorry. Good advice. Too much Thomas Pynchon.

[Spartacus]

Followed by "Updation complete"

Gentlemen from foreign climes = much quickness plenty cheapness

[SueEllen]

Followed by "Updation complete"

When I first heard someone say "updation" seriously in real life I burst out laughing.

[pjclarke]

When I first heard someone say "updation" seriously in real life I burst out laughing.

Language is constantly evolving; you watch - 5 years from now we'll all be saying it. Bit like 'upsert' and 'performant'.