Poor Writing Skills Cost Taxpayers Millions

[AgentSun]

outrageous!

Poor Writing Costs Taxpayers Millions (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050704/ap_on_re_us/government_bad_writing)

By JUSTIN POPE, AP Education Writer 54 minutes ago

States spend nearly a quarter of a billion dollars a year on remedial writing instruction for their employees, according to a new report that says the indirect costs of sloppy writing probably hurt taxpayers even more.

The National Commission on Writing, in a report to be released Tuesday, says that good writing skills are at least as important in the public sector as in private industry. Poor writing not only befuddles citizens but also slows down the government as bureaucrats struggle with unclear instructions or have to redo poorly written work.

"It's impossible to calculate the ultimate cost of lost productivity because people have to read things two and three times," said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, vice chairman of the National Governors Association, which conducted the survey for the commission.

The commission, established by the College Board, drew attention with its first report in 2003. That outlined problems with how writing is taught in American schools and proposed remedies. The group's second report, last year, tried to drum up support for writing education by highlighting the value that business and industry leaders place on writing skills.

This year, the commission surveyed human resource directors who oversee nearly 2.7 million state government employees, and found writing skills even more important than in the private sector.

While two-thirds of companies surveyed in the 2004 report said writing was an important responsibility for workers, 100 percent of the 49 states responding to the anonymous survey said it was. More than 75 percent said they take writing skills into account when hiring.

But while 70 percent of state managers said large majorities of their professional employees had adequate skills, just one-third said clerical and support staff did. The report estimates the states spend $221 million annually on remedial writing training, sometimes sending workers to $400-per-employee classes.

"You have to be able to write, convert an idea and turn it into words," said Bob Kerrey, the former U.S. senator and governor from Nebraska, who is chairman of the commission.

In public office, "I read things that were absolutely incomprehensible," Kerrey said. He shudders to think how Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, published 229 years ago Monday, would have read in standard, government-worker bureaucrat-speak.

"It would be 10 times as long, one-tenth as comprehensive, and would have lacked all inspiration," Kerrey said.

In a conference call interview last week, Kerrey, Huckabee, and Gaston Caperton — a former West Virginia governor who now leads the College Board — said many of the costs when state employees cannot express themselves clearly are hard to pin down. E-mail, which is so easy that workers can fire something off without thinking it through, may compound the problem.

"Increasingly as more things are done electronically, or via e-mail or blackberry, I think we tend to almost get even more sloppy," Huckabee said. "The truth is we need to get clear and concise. That adds to productivity."

Another hidden cost is that good ideas may never see the light of day.

"I see that all the time in writing and political speaking," Huckabee said. "There are some really bright people who can't communicate and as a result their ideas probably aren't given the attention they deserve."

The commission is calling for more Congressional funding for the National Writing Project, a professional development program for teachers, and what Kerrey says are proven methods for improving writing instruction in classrooms.

But the biggest boost to writing instruction may come from the decision by the College Board, under Caperton, to add a written essay to the SAT college entrance exam. The essay, which debuted in March, is expected to cause many high school English teachers to put more emphasis on composition. Critics, however, say the essay is formulaic, coachable, and a poor way to test the kind of writing skills students need in college.

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[LiLOrion]

Why do they hire people that cannot write? Especially if they are applying for a position that requires them to.


I think its the schools...
I noticed my younger brother does not write as well as he should. Considering he went to one of them "better" suburban schools and my sister and I had a city public school edumacation - that is kinda sad.

[Kurt_eh]

I don't know about the system south of the 49th, but up here, it's more important to learn why "to be or not to be" is the question, than to learn about little things like the difference between your, you're, and yore. (not to mention the difference between there, their, and they're) :rolleyes:

[Clarsax]

Where I went to school they really cracked down on good grammar without skimping on the "to be or not to be." We would write papers on literature, but the teachers would mark up every gramatical error they found, no matter how small. I don't think it's a matter of the schools, after all there are a lot of good writers out there who came out of the school system. I think it's more a case of the public system being lax in hiring for good grammar, and also the amount of education one of thier employees recieves. Someone who did not graduate from high school could have applied for one of these jobs and been hired, but may have never passed a course in English. Another possibility is on the college level. Someone who majors in Public Relations for instance may not be required to take any courses in English beyond the basics of the core.

[AgentSun]

but even basics in college should be enough to have decent grammar. if you get into college, it's assumed that if your grammar skills aren't good enough you can still develop them with remedial courses in college.

it's not hard to think that certain agencies might hire people despite bad grammar skills because more well-skilled people may not be applying to the same jobs.

[LiLOrion]

but even basics in college should be enough to have decent grammar. if you get into college, it's assumed that if your grammar skills aren't good enough you can still develop them with remedial courses in college.

Thats true.

Of the three universities that I attended, all had writing intensive courses in their "core". I took a lot of English classes even though I was Pre-Med. Plus they all had entrance exams to determine where you were at in terms of writing ability and if your scores were too "low" you were placed in remedial classes to get up to speed.

I honestly think I learned more in college than I did in grade through high school in terms of English and writing, but I still was not as bad as my brother. I guess maybe thats cause he's a boy and boys arent supposed to be good at English...isnt that the argument? Girls arent good in math and boys arent good in English. :D ;)

[AgentSun]

i scored much higher on my SATs in verbal than i did in math. when I got to college, I pretty much breezed through my english classes until last semester when i took literature and i hated the class. the teacher was just so vague with what she wanted...she gave me a D on a paper and never told me what i did wrong, despite all the red markings. even when i visited her in her office and we spoke about the paper for a good hour, i ended up with a D on the second paper -- again, I didnt know what i had done wrong.

I ended up with a C in that class, which is fine. I think i have really picked up my calling in life though cause I've gotten A's in every single communications class i've taken.

[TheBladeRoden]

I don't remember what I learned in English 102, but I got an A, so it's all good.

[LT Garrix]

I'm thinking back to HS, a while ago, and I was in the honor classes, so we spent more time on the literature aspect of things, having been taught the grammar part in Jr. High. Of course, we wrote a lot of essays and papers that would get marked off for bad grammar, but I think most of us had grammar pretty well set down before HS.

Senior year, scheduling forced me to take the regular English class (Comp Sci 2 and Chem 2 were infinitely more interesting to me than the AP English class) and there was a lot of stress on grammar. Now, my memories are really fuzzy since I tended to sit quietly and read a book, but I recall we did a lot of diagramming and subject-verb-object, proper use of prepositionaly phrases, etc. Of course, this was knowledge needed to pass the TASS (which you had to do to graduate, but I had already passed the previous year) so it did get stressed. But I was really surprised at the number of HS seniors that could not identify the noun. Seriously, these people scared me and it made me wonder what they had done the last 11 years. After observation, I came to the conclusion they just didn't care. They had probably never been taught, or listened to the reasons, that speaking and writing proper English will really help you get ahead in life. (that is a really crappy sentence and I apologize) For the most part, these kids came from not so well off, immigrant families and thought life owed them something. Many of my classmates have been to jail at one point in time in the last 13 years. I should have gone to the reunion and found that out. Most of the girls had no aspirations in life other than to get married and have kids so they didn't need to know anything about English since they weren't going to get a job anyway.

There are many times you are taught stuff in school, but not why it might be important. That might help some people decide to put some effort into their schoolwork. Personally, I have always had a pretty good work ethic and desire to do well. Sadly, not everyone has that.

[AgentSun]

I took Honors and AP classes in high school (was that really just 2 years ago? feels like an eternity.) and I had the wackiest honors english teacher who treated us like we were preschoolers. when we would act like preschoolers, she demanded that we act like the young adults we were supposed to be.

odd senile old woman...

we would discuss shakespeare and then she'd explain it to us like we didn't just spend 10 minutes discussing it. she LOVED me because i read a lot and she couldn't win against me when she'd get mad that i was talking in class cause i was one of the best students. oh yeah, i played the system.

[waltersgirl]

MS Word. both one of the best and worst inventions ever to grace the planet.

[sny]

I blame the educational side of it mostly on abandoning phonics (which we formally studied when I was in school... *old fogey alert!*) for "whole language" methods only. (Where children are taught to read by teaching them to recognize whole words.) I don't know about other states, but in my home state, they went through a phase where educators were advised not to correct a student's spelling in grammar school, because it might "squash" their creativity and urge to write. (Thankfully, I think educators are seeing that was a mistake. Whole language and phonics work nicely hand in hand. If you're going to use just one method, though, go with phonics.)

Bah, I say. To quote my mother, if they let you you spell "cat" k-a-t for most of your formative years, you're going to be misspelling that word for the rest of your life. They can't wait for junior high to be teaching you spelling and grammar. And we had spelling as a subject. Do they still teach spelling?

And I think a lot of it is indifference and laziness. I hate to sound like a "back in my day" complainer when I'm all of 28, but, yeesh. I've hung around some fanfic communities, and been absolutely gob-smacked at how not only young teens, but college students, and even college graduates not all that much younger than I am, can churn out some of the most horribly constructed, badly spelled, grammatically tortured pieces of garbage masquerading as stories that I've ever seen. I have literally abandoned reading stories simply because they were too much "work" to read. It sucked all the enjoyment out of it, trying to figure out what the heck the author meant. I've seen people write dialogue or even entire stories as netspeak, which makes my brain hurt. NETSPEAK! There are some gems, mind, but it's hard to find them, as they're such a minority. It's getting so that on some fanfic communities, if you can manage to write anything that looks like decent English, reviewers feel compelled to kiss your feet.

Do they not do peer review and teacher correction on papers any more? We used to exchange essays and give feedback. And we were generally more nitpicky with one another than the teachers were with us. We even appreciated it when someone critiqued a paper well. It meant they READ it. I seem to see a lot of younger people at these fanfic sites who can't stand anything approaching criticism. I think all this touchy-feely business about how you constantly have to be positive and tell a kid (s)he's the best thing since sliced bread may have gotten slightly out of hand. I'm all for boosting a kid's self-esteem, but some people seem to think boosting and preserving self-esteem means you can never correct a child when they make a mistake. And that shows. Shouldn't we be preparing kids for the harsh reality that, yes, out there in the real world, you will be criticized? And that, sometimes, you deserve it? And how to take said criticism? Like, by evaluating it, deciding what applies, what is unfair, what you can take away to work on and improve upon?

The thing is, most of these kids seem to have no concept of what separates a "flame" from a piece of constructive criticism. Some of them seem like they have never once in their life been informed that they are not perfection personified in every way and/or that everyone can improve. A review that says "Great job on the plot and the characters, but your story would be easier to read and flow even better if you employed a beta reader and double-checked your spelling." often prompts cries of "OMG! It's, like, FAAAAAN Fiction, u big meenie! liek, speeling und gramer r not mpurtent! I gots an C in Urnglish last yeeer!" from the authors. Then a string of profanity and the nonsensical supporting cries of "If you don't like it, don't read it!" from their little friends. (Which always kills me. What am I? Psychic? How do I know I don't like it before I read it? And when did "Review" become synonymous with "Praise"? Reviews can be positive or negative. Or a mix. Makes me want to tell them to look it up in a dictionary.) And no, not all of the people who reply like that are thirteen, either. I've seen people in their twenties react like that. With the same spelling. It's scary to me how many of them show absolutely no pride whatsoever in their own work, to the point of being sloppy in the extreme. So sloppy that it's no fun to read.

And I don't just see it there. I see it in my job, too. I work at a college. There are certain of my colleagues who are supposedly PhDs/educators by trade who send me emails that make me cringe. I'm talking not just the occasional typo, but sentences that literally make no sense and need to be reread a dozen times to get any semblance of meaning out of them. Grammar and spelling, completely out the window, and all that. And we've seen a few completely buggered up applications for employment with our office that made us immediately discount the candidate before even interviewing them. We might be a tech office, but a big part of your job is being able to write comprehensible emails and help desk replies. If you can't be bothered to spellcheck and reread your application to check for errors, that's a big, red flag to us that perhaps your attention to detail will be less than desirable in other areas. If you can't fill out a legible application, it makes us wonder if you can read instructions and follow them. Or write documentation for others. But the person with the buggered up application demanded that we explain to him why we didn't hire him. We had to explain that we weren't being "grammar nazis" for the fun of it, but because it was an important part of the job. (In fact, he also hadn't followed the very simple instructions for filling out the application. Reading skills, boys and girls, are very important.)

Sadly, I think a lot of it really is down to just plain laziness and attitude, not so much a lack of skills. I've heard "Why proofread and spellcheck? It's just a(n) email/fanfiction story/interoffice memo/application for a summer job/etc." a lot.

Maybe because your writing is often the first impression people have of you?

It's kind of sad that they have to retrain people for something so basic. But, on the other hand, good to see they're at least training these people to improve their writing skills. Could really pay off down the road.

[AgentSun]

i, too, have given up on some fanfic because of crappy grammar. there is nothing worse than a 'writer' who can't write.

last year, my roommate and i found a paper our other roommate had written for an upper level sociology course. it was like a fifth grader had writen it. we read through the entire thing and were absolutely amazed that the paper could even be turned in. the grammar was horrendous and the writing was amateur. for a girl in her junior year, i felt that it was a paper that belonged to a 7 year old instead and the 7 year old could have probably done better. it is probably the WORST paper i have ever seen....if i were a professor, being handed a paper like that would've caused me to scream and give it back for rewriting. and she was studying to be a social worker too. :shakes head: those poor kids.

[tedbragg1]

My english teachers were RUTHLESS, and I love them for it. My mother is a grammar queen, so that's helped me quite a bit.

Nowadays, I rush and forget proper sentence structure. Message boards and their 'conversational' posts can be attibuted to that...

[AgentSun]

there's a time and place for everything. on the boards and on IM when i'm talking to my friends, i could care less about capitalization and proper comma use. but i still spell properly and write coherantly.

in papers and in emails to professors i cross my t's and dot my i's perfectly, because it's professional to do so and it's a sign of respect. to talk to superiors or figures of authority in the same way as you would your friends is disrespect, i think.

[LT Garrix]

Oh, goodness yes. I've seen some horrible writing on fanfiction.com. Thankfully Kansas authors seem to hold themselves to high standards and I found a HP site that validates work to ensure the grammar and spelling are good.

It's a shame that people don't seem to realize they are judged by what they write. I will admit that if a poster uses a lot of netspeak, bad spelling, grammar, etc, I will stop paying attention to what they post. I don't want to spend the time deciphering their thoughts.

[AgentSun]

i read an article a few months ago when i was trying to figure out how to handle internship interviews and stuff. in this article i read that a few universities have had complaints from employers they have partnerships with to provide internships or jobs with students. basically, these companies are having problems with a few 'nightmare' interviewees who don't understand what goes into a proper interview. i think one example was a girl who walked in wearing jeans and flip flops and it was supposed to be a very important interview.

[Judith]

I don't know about other states, but in my home state, they went through a phase where educators were advised not to correct a student's spelling in grammar school, because it might "squash" their creativity and urge to write.

I remember when they started doing that with my little cousins. Then I saw some of their schoolwork and it was like a little piece of me died.




Sadly, I think a lot of it really is down to just plain laziness and attitude, not so much a lack of skills. I've heard "Why proofread and spellcheck? It's just a(n) email/fanfiction story/interoffice memo/application for a summer job/etc." a lot.



I don't think that's necessarily the case. I work as a tutor at the writing center at ASU. I get a lot of kids who have no basic concept of grammar, or how to write a paper. And these aren't just English as a Second Language (or third, or forth) students, and these aren't just freshmen. I see this from seniors. I see this from students who come from different high schools across the country. It's sad.

[AgentSun]

i think that laziness is something that can be induced from frustration. i am horrible at math and i accept that i'll never be able to do advanced trig but i remember in school when i had to do math that was beyond what i could comprehend, i got so frustrated and angry and i wasn't doing well in the class no matter how much help i was getting and i remember being so frustrated that i gave up and just started to stop caring.

it's not laziness because you don't care at all, it's laziness because not caring feels better than being mad all the time that you can't do it. sometimes one end of the scale is tipped more than the other (like me -- i'm much better in verbal than in math) but for some people it's tipped even more.

[LT Garrix]

I'm not better in one than the other, my SATs were within 50 points of each other, I'd just rather do math. I know there is an answer there and it's a write answer that there is no question that it is the answer. So much in literature analysis is subjective.

I think part of it may be that kids are lost early because they don't move as quickly as others, or they are so far ahead of the others they get bored and stop paying attention (a huge problem for me in elementary school, but once I hit Jr. High we were sorted by skill level and it got better).

I think kids need to be sorted out sooner and as much as it may suck, they probably need to have different teachers in elementary. Some kids are better at one subject than another and while might do okay in an advanced English class, they might struggle in advanced math or vice versa.

In part, I think some of this problem comes from the whole pass at any cost so as not to hurt little Johnny or Susy's self esteem. Some kids need to be held back, but we can't do that anymore.

I had heard bad things about the turning away from phonics, but hadn't realized how bad it was. I know phonics really helped me learn how to spell. That and learning the root of words.

[AgentSun]

the roots were what really helped me...prefixes and suffixes helped massive amounts too.

[AyuRocks]

Sny - I was in *gifted* school and in first and second grade they didn't teach us spelling and wouldn't correct our spelling. I wasn't able to spell correctly until around 9th grade. It was a terrible thing to do to us.

[AgentSun]

i don't understand exactly why that's a good thing? i mean, how do educators think that it's a good thing to not correct spelling?

[Judith]

the roots were what really helped me...prefixes and suffixes helped massive amounts too.

That helped me a lot...a lot of what helped my understanding of the English language came from learning Spanish. Cause when you learn a new language, you have to start from scratch and you learn a lot more about formal grammar rules than you do learning your native language as a little kid. And once I learned what those rules were in Spanish, I could either see how they were similar in English, or how they were different, and why that might be.

[LT Garrix]

More and more I think that if I have kids, they will be homeschooled. There are so many ways in which the public schools seem to be failing kids. Either that or a nice private school that does things the way I like.

[eta_carinae]

you know, I don't think I really understood the difference between verbs, adverbs, adjectives, and nouns (ok, I knew what a noun was) until I studied French in highschool. Having to learn the grammer for a foreign language was the only way I ever learned it for English. I don't know if I just didn't pay attention when they covered that stuff in English class, or if they just skimmed right over it...

ETA - and I just noticed Judith posted almost the same thing as me :lol
*makes mental note to read the whole thread in the future before posting*

[sny]

and she was studying to be a social worker too. :shakes head: those poor kids.

One of the scariest pieces of fanfic I ever read was written by a person claiming to be a college student majoring in English. I'm not sure how, as she seemed to be completely massacring the language in her writing. It actually dethroned the piece by a guy who said he was going into the army in a few weeks, yet wrote the lyrics to the national anthem as “…by the donserly light”… We won’t mention that he had an original character (the dreaded uber-patriotic, uber-talented American Exchange Student O’ Doom with Mary Sue stamped on her forehead…) singing it. ;-)

The Schnoogle sites are quite good about proofing HP fics, but I’ve seen a clunker or two there, too. I assume they were allowed through by new proofreaders who didn’t understand the position. Nothing like fanfiction.net, though. Some of those… *shudder*.

One thing that makes English tougher is its widespread roots. We’ve borrowed, begged, stolen and adapted English from so many other languages that rules only seem to exist so they can have exceptions. But I’ve noticed that most writers with real excuses (like being dyslexic, or having learning disabilities, etc.) compensate for it by having betas and taking extra pains, and they generally have better writing than the average population. Which makes me angry when I see someone who is obviously just being lazy and uncaring whining that their bunny died four summers ago and the trauma still prevents them from using a dictionary properly.

As for why some people think not correcting a kid is a good idea, in our case, the head of the state educational system at the beginning of this reform was from California. Where he had just finished revamping their school system in the same fashion. I suppose the psychobabble behind it sounded convincing enough to our legislators at the time, or they didn’t bother reading the legistlation they were voting on. Don’t get me wrong. Some of his reforms, I support. Writing portfolios as a requirement to graduate, I’m all for that. Increasing writing in school, yay. But some of his elementary school ideas were just plain nutty, like chucking phonics in the gutter. I don’t know how he thought high school students were going to be able to produce proper portfolios if you leave teaching them sentence structure and spelling (or even how to sound out an unfamiliar word) until they’re nearly in high school.

And yes, our college preps students for job interviews by critiquing their wardrobe (or lack thereof) at mock interviews before they go on real interviews, too. I hear they sometimes show up in things that are frighteningly inappropriate.

[RustySlinky]

English. Math. Science. I've earned my failing letter grades "F"'s in all of them, despite studying my butt off, and being punished (most of the time, bruises but no blood) for these bad grades. Teachers have given up on me, I had to find my own ways to learn.

I wasn't flagged for having learning disabilities, not until my senior year(s) in college, and I recognize what I have in other people.

I suspect that 25% of the US Population has problems with learning in some way, like me. I think many of us are in prison.

The regular classroom method of teaching does not work for people like me. I think some schools need to change the way they teach people like me.

Also, more and more, people are being pushed into college-level educations in order to compete in the global job market. I don't know how yet to express this thought in writing, but society needs to think about how not everyone can get hired to do engineering in the competitive-market, like not everyone can play professional-level basketball.

Regarding Darwin and natural selection, my responsibility unless proven otherwise, is that my genetic-line must end with me. :)

------
I still suck at writing. It took me 40 minutes to write this post, this is what my writing looks like after 40 minutes.

[LT Garrix]

Even with college educations, a lot of people can't find jobs. Partly because there are some fields you can major in that have almost no practical value whatsoever. They would be good as a minor to complement a major, but by themselves provide little in the way of employment opportunity. I always enjoyed seeing what college athletes were majoring in. Yes, some will go into truly tough and useful on the outside majors, but you see those that are clearly in a curriculum tailored to athletes that will do little to help them upon graduation if they don't go pro. I won't get started on my college athlete rant.

One of the big problems we (the US) have is that most of the students studying math/science/engineering at US colleges are not US citizens. The Defense industry is struggling hard to find people to fill these jobs. Now, that's good for me since I can easily find employment when I decide to leave the Navy, but it's bad for us as a nation. Part of this, I think, comes from the whole "teach to the test" mentality. Science and Engineering, in particular, require critical thinking skills that aren't being taught anymore. Kids are being force fed info they need to pass an assessment test. Schools should be accredited and hold teachers responsible for testing the students knowledge. A passing grade should mean that the student has mastered the skills required of that course no standardized test should be needed. This would give teachers more freedom to tailor their classes to their students.

RustySlinky, I feel for you and others like you. The school system has done a great disservice to people who's brains are just wired a little differently. I don't know what the state of diagnosing learning disabilities is now, but I do know that schools have precious little budget money to provide help to those that need help.

[sny]

Also, more and more, people are being pushed into college-level educations in order to compete in the global job market. I don't know how yet to express this thought in writing, but society needs to think about how not everyone can get hired to do engineering in the competitive-market, like not everyone can play professional-level basketball.


Definitely. Just like not everyone can be a mechanic. Or a brain surgeon. Everyone's got their strengths and weaknesses, and everyone has their niche. I hate it when people get all snobby about kids wanting to go to technical school instead of college. To me, any higher education, be it job training, or a trade school, is just as worthy as college. Not everyone is cut out for college. Some trade school grads make far and away more than I do as a college grad, and rightly so. They're highly skilled in their fields.


I still suck at writing. It took me 40 minutes to write this post, this is what my writing looks like after 40 minutes.

But you don't suck at it! That post is about as perfect as it gets. Heck, I take that long sometimes, too, because I want to mull over what I want to say and how I'm saying it. Helps keep me from suffering from "foot in mouth" syndrome too often. ;-) I also joke that I would love to keep my fanfic beta reader in my pocket at all times for those moments when my typing goes to heck in a handbasket... Or my brain.

[LT Garrix]

sny, as long as it gets the kid a job that gets them out of your house, you shouldn't complain. ;) :lol I know, that was horrible, wasn't it. ;)

[AgentSun]

i don't think there's a perfection to anything, just a coherance. i'm a notorious spelling nazi and in my beta days (before i ran out of time), i would just murder some fics i betaed for because a lot of it was just plain bad spelling.

sometimes when i type as fast as i can, i make twice as many mistakes. but i go back and correct them as i'm typing them . it's all about a matter of coherance...i'd rather type coherantly and
spell things correctly.

there is no such thing as having a 'perfect' writing skill but if you communicate coherantly and effectively, than your job is done.

i was a private school girl. i still am. i don't think i'll ever put my kids into public school. i'm glad i decided against moving to public school in high school. it would've been such a bad move.