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Re: How To Choose A Good TW Was Re: Giving a surprise test to interviewees?
Subject:Re: How To Choose A Good TW Was Re: Giving a surprise test to interviewees? From:David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sat, 19 Mar 2005 14:01:15 -0600
Tony,
Baloney. Sorry, but there are people who can do both functions quite
well. Much depends upon the quality of their early English
instruction.
For example, in my honors level high school English classes, we wrote
every day...and received two grades for each paper. One was for the
grammar issues, the other for the content...yes, including how it was
structured!
(In fact, the seniors graded the juniors' papers, and vice versa--with
the Ph.D. teacher going over them to be sure that everything was
correctly scored...with particular attention to those who were either
particularly high or particularly low in the marks given. He
considered the grading to be an essential element of the educational
experience...and I concur.)
Unfortunately, if we missed three or more grammar points we received
no grade for content. At the end of each term, two grades were dropped
as possible aberrations.
This kind of training produces people who are detail oriented for the
mechanics and who structure their thoughts--and thus their
writing--quite well.
It is classes that let you skate by in which you develop shoddy
habits...and, usually, it is those who don't much care for the details
and who won't push themselves to excel in them who come to believe as
you do.
Personally, I tend to be less than exacting concerning many day-to-day
living details, but extremely conscious of detail in my work--even
though most of my consulting life has entailed system-level issues.
I agree, however, that examining applicants should entail more than
grammar--although I maintain that for a writer the command of basic
grammar is a basic and essential tool. Calling it "trivial" is much
like saying that for a carpenter a hammer is "trivial." In both cases,
take the tool away and the result is something of a disaster.
David
On Sat, 19 Mar 2005 09:00:24 -0800 (PST), Tony Markos
<ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
>
> If you focus on evaluating the trivial (grammar), you
> will choose the candidate who excels at the trivial.
>
> If you want a Technical Writer who excels at analysis
> for and design of technical communications, you need a
> TW who can approach a project from a relatively
> high-level of abstraction. And unfortunately,
> higher-level-of-abstraction type people often miss the
> itty bitty details in timed tests.
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