Questions

Do you need some form of degree in literacy, English or whatever in order to write a novel?
I’m thinking of writing a novel and wondered if i needed some form of qualification? Maybe this contributes to making a good story?
- chunky_chip

ative English speakers need to improve their English writing, and English teachers are working to meet this challenge. People today may text each other in abbreviated English and nonstandard spelling, often limiting their reading to cereal boxes over breakfast. Many people lack the background necessary to either teach well or write well. The past, however, is no different. There was no utopian era of writing. Thirty years ago television may have distracted people and eighty years ago radio. Before that people may have not had the time or been illiterate. To nostalgically remember a Golden Age where a high level of literacy was the norm and all English speakers waxed poetry is to deny reality.

Today’s reality demands that more and more people write, and write well, to be successful. Students need to write to do well in school, people in business at all levels need to write to carry out their business, and many people need to write others at long distances to maintain personal relationships. Writing and writing well present a challenge for the native English speaker. For the nonnative English speaker, however, writing is even more of a challenge. Speaking presents a myriad of challenges too, but speaking focuses on getting our messages across. While some people who write speeches and some others do focus on crafting their speech, most people simply speak.

Writing, however, demands that we craft our words. First we think about what we are going to write. Then we write it. After that, we go back and examine what we have written. Sometimes we read our writing aloud to hear how it sounds. All this work helps us to edit our writing. Nonnative speakers, however, often lack the ear or a sense of the language, complicating the writing process for them. When we teach writing to nonnative speakers, we see writing that is a combination of knowledge from their English knowledge and from their first language. If nonnative speakers know languages other than their first language and English, we may see their influence too.

As an example, let’s look at Japanese who are not native speakers of English and how their English studies and the influence of their native language may influence their English writing. Starting with the influence of their English studies, many Japanese are used to speaking English. When they first start to write in English, they use the same patterns that they use when speaking. Teachers teaching such students need to be sure that their students understand the difference between written and spoken text. This will require giving the students examples, providing reading, and showing them how to edit their written texts.

Japanese students are also influenced by the long sentences common to Japanese. Below is an example of how an English sentence might look if it were written a Japanese student in English but with Japanese construction:

As almost all our writing work concerns Japanese to English translations, this section will address sentence lengths of English sentences, which can get very confusing when they are too long; many Japanese writers use very long sentences, compared to English writers.

The above example is not well written and is just too long. The sentence has too much punctuation: three commas and a semicolon. The student did not understand that semicolons normally connect two short sentences, not two long ones. The Japanese student also needs to learn that sentences with too many commas are confusing. Lastly is the problem that the sentence has too many ideas. The student needs to learn the general rule that each sentence should have one idea.

Many Japanese sentences are very long and contain more than one idea. Japanese students may create such Japanese sentences in their mind and produce them as English sentences. This is one error that creates many difficult to understand English sentences. Japanese students must remember that one long Japanese sentence should be reorganized into two, three, or even four smaller English sentences.

When teaching English writing to speakers of other languages, knowing about the influence of their native languages can help. Read the writing of enough nonnative English students with the same native language and you will see the influence. Understanding this influence is one way to help to better teach these students.

When people think of writing, they invariably think oof story writing or creative writing. Curriculum Vitae (CV) (or resume) writing is an entirely different discipline to creative writing although the rules you learn through creative writing regarding grammar, spelling and punctuation are extremely important in CV writing, even if the creative aspect is not required.

Since your CV is a shop window for you and is more often than not the first and only impression that you will give a recruiting employer, it is imperative that you ensure it is written to the highest standard you can manage.

There are many websites out there offering free advice that can easily be applied to CV writing (or resume writing) so you don’t have to pay someone else to write it for you. This will allow you to submit it, confident in the knowledge that it is all your own work. Some believe there is something rather dishonest about having your CV written for you as it doesn’t provide an insight into your own written communication skills.

Poor language or spelling will reflect badly on you. Rightly or wrongly, a prospective employer will take this as an indication of your general level of literacy. For this reason, you should look for some editing and checking advice to combine with language and punctuation advice.

Don’t rush your CV; take your time. Make sure you have addressed all of the points possible. Use the language and writing advice you find to ensure that your sentences are as efficient as possible. This means that you get the desired message across in the minimum number of words. Your resume needs to be short, or you risk not having it read at all.

Check your spelling and punctuation more than once: there are few things that annoy reviewers more than bad spelling and badly applied punctuation.

There is always a tendency and a temptation to use partial sentences and phrases in bullet points because ‘they’ll know what you mean’. Try to avoid this wherever possible and demonstrate, through your CV, your ability to be an effective written communicator. You will notice more and more job advertisements asking for excellent written and oral communicators: your CV can demonstrate this for you at the application stage if you take the time and put the effort in.

There are a great many websites out there giving advice on how best to lay out your CV and what information to include, so there’s no point in repeating it all here. Try visiting www.freewritingadvice.com for some of the general writing advice described in this article.

Since CV, or resume, writing is open to a large amount of subjective opinion, it pays to research what is currently accepted and preferred practice in the jobs market today. The content and style of CVs/resumes can change through time and each reviewing manager will have their own preferences.

Try looking at specialised forums or online communities to get a good view of opinion and advice from specialists and other job hunters, who can give you the benefit of their experience. This may vary depending on the job sector you are targeting, so do your homework. Monster.com has a Resume Tips forum that is definitely worth a browse.

There are a great many sites offering advice, services and examples of CVs / resumes. Specialist sites like Resume-help.org can prove to be very valuable if you would prefer to have your CV professionally written, are looking for examples to base to your own on or are looking for specialist advice on what your CV, or even covering letters, should contain.


- Paul Docherty