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Subject:Re: Who is an ESL writer? From:Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> To:Reshma <reshma_pendse -at- yahoo -dot- co -dot- in> Date:Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:26:41 -0700
Honestly? I think academia is going to eat itself alive. All certificates
and credentials do is help HR people weed through the thousands of resumes
they receive for every job posting. I don't play that game. I do great
work. I meet people who want great work done. They hire me to do more great
work.
Do I agree with training? Absolutely. Training is an essential part of
life, and it happens both formally and informally through a variety of
means. Can an ESL writer learn to write "the New York Style"? Sure. no
certification required. Just read a number of US-baesd news articles and
blogs to get a sense of how language is commonly used.
Then contrast this to what grammar girl teaches, and somewhere in the
middle you find the right mix of natural and accurate usage.
The best way to bridge the communication divide is to communicate: An
overseas friend I met on this list has shared usage questions, just to get
a native North American perspective. Were I writing for their country I
would ask how English speakers used certain terms as well.
Does this help?
-Tony
On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 11:13 AM, Reshma <reshma_pendse -at- yahoo -dot- co -dot- in> wrote:
> You're right, Tony. A certification might not help with accent and
> colloquialisms. But for people in the technical writing field, where plain
> English is expected, wouldn't a certification by a standard body help?
>
>
> Regards,
> Reshma
>
> Sent from my iPhone, please ignore typos.
>
> On 28-Mar-2013, at 11:38 PM, Tony Chung <tonyc -at- tonychung -dot- ca> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 10:27 AM, reshma pendse <reshma_pendse -at- yahoo -dot- co -dot- in
> > wrote:
>
>>
>> What do you think? Would a standard certification requirement make it
>> easier for hiring managers to separate the wheat from the chaff, and reduce
>> the challenges of working with under-qualified people?
>>
>
>
> Reshma,
>
> I am reminded of the time many decades ago where my band played in a
> competition in Tokyo. One of the MCs was heralded for his mastery of the
> "New York Style". He spoke Japanese like a native. After all, he was a
> native Japanese man. But when he broke into English, his enunciation and
> voice morphed into that of an American DJ--or at least what they thought
> all American DJs sounded like.
>
> So certification can only take one so far. And it would also depend on who
> managed the training. Even if I spoke another language with some degree of
> proficiency, I would have to live in a the target cultural area long enough
> to understand the differences between how words are supposed to be used vs
> how they are used right now. Just listen to a group of pre-teen boys talk
> about Herman Melville's classic work, featuring "Call me Ishmael", one
> Captain Ahab, and a whale--named Moby Dick.
>
>
> Sorry to hijack this question, but I wonder if there would be more
> consistency in the areas of Plain Language or Simplified Technical English?
> Practitioners in those specialized, controlled vocabularies would probably
> not use colloquial phrases at all.
>
> -Tony
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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