Writing Deficiencies in Today
Employers rank oral and written skills as some of the most valuable qualifications desirable when looking for new hiring candidates (Gray, 2005). Writings need to be informative, concise, free of spelling and grammatical errors. Additionally, effective business communication needs to be accurate and clear in meaning. Implications of poor grammar skills of today’s employees on company profitability can quickly add up into the billions. Company productivity can be effected due to poor communication between employees and customers.
The need to have material interpreted by different employees because of poorly written material causes lost time and productivity. Instructions being misinterpreted due to poorly written material causes unnecessary time being lost. The academic community has long debated the need to teach grammar skills and its benefits to students. Unfortunately; college students are graduating every day without the simple basic knowledge of sentence structure, spelling or grammar (College Bad, The National Commission on Writing for America’s Families, Schools, and
Colleges, 2004). Traditionally, two different approaches have been used. In the ass’s, a “rule-based”, approach which used repetitive drills and sentence diagramming was employed. This theory was proven ineffective by Weaver in 1 996 (Weaver, 1996), and a “context-based”, theory was adopted, which focused on students learning language by using a specific content. Regardless of the approach taken it is clear that it is necessary to take charge of our students need to learn grammar skills at an early age and to reinforce Hess skills throughout their school age years.
