matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) (01/20/89)
Daniel Kimberg quoted me and said: >*Who* is aware of the problem? Certainly managers in industry are painfully >aware of it, especially on the written side. University educators are >vaguely aware of it. But the *students* are not aware of it at all. They >would be shocked to know how much of ordinary work in the real world >consists of communication -- holding meetings, writing reports, >explaining things to others, dealing with users of the company's products, >etc. * Maybe you've just never met any students *who've held full time jobs. If you trace back the train of articles that led to the one in question, you'll see that the discussion had already excluded the people who had worked full-time before returning to school. Among the other students, I certainly have observed this quite a bit myself, both when I was in industry and now in academia. Of course, I am not alone in this at all. One often sees "Why can't Johnny write?" articles in the engineering trade papers. Also, the discussion certainly does not mean 100.000000% when it uses language like, "Students do such and such ..." I made an explicit disclaimer to the contrary in my first posting in this discussion, and I think that one is implied anyway. Norm
dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) (01/20/89)
In article <19244@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes: [Norm's original statements deleted so inews won't barf] [this is me, then his response:] >*Maybe you've just never met any students who've held full time jobs. > >If you trace back the train of articles that led to the one in question, >you'll see that the discussion had already excluded the people who had >worked full-time before returning to school. Right, I actually meant students who'd held full time summer jobs in which they had to do things like give presentations, document their code, write grant proposals, etc. (depending on the job) I think that this covers a pretty respectable percentage of college students, and I don't think these people would be ignorant of the environment in which they had worked. >Among the other students, I certainly have observed this quite a bit myself, >both when I was in industry and now in academia. Of course, I am not alone >in this at all. One often sees "Why can't Johnny write?" articles in the >engineering trade papers. > >Also, the discussion certainly does not mean 100.000000% when it uses >language like, "Students do such and such ..." I made an explicit >disclaimer to the contrary in my first posting in this discussion, >and I think that one is implied anyway. Right, well perhaps the point I intended was that anecdotal evidence is the worst sort of way to support an argument like this. Every student I know is at least literate enough to function in the workplace, if not to pen the next Anna Karenina. I'm not arguing that the literacy problems are unreal, but it's obvious that anecdotal evidence is going to make things sound worse than they are. How many people have ever told a story about someone being able to write an excellent inter-office memo, or give a concise presentation, even if these things happened? Almost by definition, the more shocking pessimistic stories are going to be more widespread. Sure, it's easy to make a generalization such as that students are not aware of the problem of illiteracy. And I don't mean to imply that you're forced to prove 100%. But since this runs contrary to my observations, I want more support than just a few anecdotes, or pleas of someone else's personal experience, or even articles that were written more with an eye for flashy statistics and shocking results than actual validity. I don't mean to confound literacy and awareness of the problem of literacy here, by the way, but I think the same arguments apply to both. I suspect that on the whole, college graduates are fairly literate, and to some extent aware of the importance of literacy. Also, I've been using the term literacy in place of something like "communication skills". -Dan
matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) (01/21/89)
In article <5618@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) writes: >In article <19244@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes: >Right, I actually meant students who'd held full time summer jobs in which >they had to do things like give presentations, document their code, write >grant proposals, etc. (depending on the job) I think that this covers a >pretty respectable percentage of college students, and I don't think these >people would be ignorant of the environment in which they had worked. That's a very interesting thing to say. My undergrad students complain that they can't find summer jobs in CS, in spite of the proximity of the Silicon Valley. Only a few seem to manage. But of those that do, they certainly have had their eyes opened, as you said. >Right, well perhaps the point I intended was that anecdotal evidence is >the worst sort of way to support an argument like this. Every student I >know is at least literate enough to function in the workplace, if not to >pen the next Anna Karenina. The students can generally write grammatically and with a reasonably small number of misspellings. But what they write is NOT clear. This is not anecdotal evidence; it is what I observe constantly, in my students, in the people I worked with when I was in industry, in the computer manuals I read, in the research papers which are sent to me for review, etc. It is a serious problem. >forced to prove 100%. But since this runs contrary to my observations, Maybe in the rarified air of Princeton, engineering students are true scholars, putting as much emphasis on their nonengineering courses as on the engineering stuff. But we're fairly selective here too -- an applicant has to have nearly a straight-A average to get into EE here -- and yet this is not what I see. [Of course, this invites some "California jokes," which is fine with me ... :-) ] Norm
dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) (01/21/89)
In article <19292@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes: [cites my saying that a respectable %age of undergrads get real summer jobs] >That's a very interesting thing to say. My undergrad students complain >that they can't find summer jobs in CS, in spite of the proximity of the >Silicon Valley. Only a few seem to manage. > >But of those that do, they certainly have had their eyes opened, as you said. That's strange. Could be geography. >The students can generally write grammatically and with a reasonably >small number of misspellings. But what they write is NOT clear. >This is not anecdotal evidence; it is what I observe constantly, in >my students, in the people I worked with when I was in industry, in >the computer manuals I read, in the research papers which are sent to >me for review, etc. It is a serious problem. Well, I meant anecdotal in the sense that you aren't enforcing experimental controls, not in that you don't have sufficient basis for your claim. I don't doubt that it's a serious problem, but I still maintain that the higher salience of the negative examples makes the problem seem more serious than it is. I know I could name ten examples of poor teaching I've received at princeton off the top of my head, and it would take a while to come up with ten examples of good teaching. But I don't think this is a good basis for criticizing the teaching here. >>forced to prove 100%. But since this runs contrary to my observations, > >Maybe in the rarified air of Princeton, engineering students are true >scholars, putting as much emphasis on their nonengineering courses as >on the engineering stuff. But we're fairly selective here too -- an >applicant has to have nearly a straight-A average to get into EE here -- >and yet this is not what I see. [Of course, this invites some "California >jokes," which is fine with me ... :-) ] Hey, I never said princeton was any different from anyplace else. But you made a statement about students which I thought ran contrary to my observations [i.e. that students were largely unaware of the literacy problem]. Now I admit I'm biased because I'm a student, and I take any general statement about students, whether or not it applies to me, personally. But I was hoping to point out that in your position, there's a bias too [and now we're moving more towards the question of literacy and away from the question of awareness], towards the negative position. -Dan
matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) (01/25/89)
In article <5676@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) writes: >In article <19292@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes: >[cites my saying that a respectable %age of undergrads get real summer jobs] >>That's a very interesting thing to say. My undergrad students complain >>that they can't find summer jobs in CS, in spite of the proximity of the >>Silicon Valley. Only a few seem to manage. >That's strange. Could be geography. Well, it definitely appears to be more difficult than it used to be, an observation partially confirmed by the fact that a netter read the above passage and sent me e-mail saying that indeed, his company has stopped its former practice of hiring summer students. Maybe it's due to the fact that a lot of the companies in Silicon Valley are small, with limited budgets. >>The students can generally write grammatically and with a reasonably >>small number of misspellings. But what they write is NOT clear. >>This is not anecdotal evidence; it is what I observe constantly, in >>my students, in the people I worked with when I was in industry, in >>the computer manuals I read, in the research papers which are sent to >>me for review, etc. It is a serious problem. >Well, I meant anecdotal in the sense that you aren't enforcing experimental >controls, not in that you don't have sufficient basis for your claim. I What controls? In my grad course last quarter, only 1 out of 15 reports was written clearly. [In fact, I heaped SO much praise on that one student for writing so well, that she must have been a bit puzzled. :-) ] Unless you want to bring in some unlikely theory of sampling bias, e.g. that for some reason my courses tend to attract poor writers :-) , I would say that my observations satisfy reasonable statistical criteria. In my former (pre-CS) "life," I was a statistician, so I do tend to be careful .... >problem]. Now I admit I'm biased because I'm a student, and I take any >general statement about students, whether or not it applies to me, >personally. But I was hoping to point out that in your position, there's >a bias too [and now we're moving more towards the question of literacy >and away from the question of awareness], towards the negative position. Hey, wait a minute, don't make this an Us-vs.-Them thing. I'm not one of those guys that says, "In my day, we trudged through 5 feet of snow to get to school, and we knew how to WRITE!" [I'm from LA, so I certainly couldn't talk about the snow stuff. :-) ] In fact, if you go back to my original postings, you'll see that I really was implicitly putting the blame on the FACULTY, for not adequately warning the students about the need for good verbal skills. Norm
dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) (01/25/89)
In article <19443@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes: >What controls? In my grad course last quarter, only 1 out of 15 reports >was written clearly. [In fact, I heaped SO much praise on that one student Oh, okay. I just got the impression from your message that you meant the frequency with which you noticed poor writing ("observe constantly," I think, was the phrase I remembered), not the proportion... [some of my stuff about bias deleted] >Hey, wait a minute, don't make this an Us-vs.-Them thing. I'm not one >of those guys that says, "In my day, we trudged through 5 feet of snow >to get to school, and we knew how to WRITE!" [I'm from LA, so I certainly >couldn't talk about the snow stuff. :-) ] Okay, sorry, didn't mean to do that. >In fact, if you go back to my original postings, you'll see that I really >was implicitly putting the blame on the FACULTY, for not adequately warning >the students about the need for good verbal skills. I'm more or less up in the air about this, but I think that the real problem isn't with students or faculty, it's with something else, which I don't really want to call "society", but for which I can't think of a better term. I'd suspect that many if not all students, including myself, are students for reasons other than education, although education may be one of the reasons, even the top reason, for some. And for similar reasons, people who have no interest in or aptitude for teaching are ending up teaching classes. [i'm mostly talking about lower level college courses on down to high school. above that, i don't think teaching ability is as important as understanding, since by that time a student should need professors less as instructors and more as expert resources - by that point, most students should at least have the ability to learn on their own, given decent feedback] I think most of the blame for this rests on the shoulders of the administrators and beaurocrats and government furniture, who are making decisions about education without any knowledge [at least that they are using] about education. I'd suspect this is true at every level, from the decisions made by the federal government, down to the decisions made by elementary school principals, school board officials, and deans of faculty. -Dan
dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) (01/26/89)
In article <19443@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) writes: > In my grad course last quarter, only 1 out of 15 reports > was written clearly. [In fact, I heaped SO much praise on that one student > for writing so well, that she must have been a bit puzzled. :-) ] ... > In fact, if you go back to my original postings, you'll see that I really > was implicitly putting the blame on the FACULTY, for not adequately warning > the students about the need for good verbal skills. I heartily agree with this. The entire technical community has developed many bad writing habits. Since engineering schools do not teach students to write, students learn to write by subconsciously adapting to the style they read. That style is frequently abysmal. Pick up virtually any technical journal, and you will often spend twice the necessary effort trying to decipher an author's intent. A typical engineer probably writes worse after earning a Ph.D. than (s)he did as a freshman. For example, if a freshman wants to tell you that a thermometer measures temperature, (s)he will probably write: "The thermometer measures temperature." After several years of plowing through the verbiage of the technical literature, the budding Ph.D. learns that facts do not speak adequately for themselves. One must also attempt to pad sentences with as many useless words and convoluted structures as possible. Thus illumined, our engineer writes: "It is the thermometer which is that which serves to accomplish the purpose of temperature measurement." or some similar monstrosity. Things get more interesting when our engineer masters the passive voice, multiple subordinate clauses, and a vocabulary large enough to obscure the simplest concept. Eventually our engineer can create such verbal puzzles that nobody can understand them on the first reading. I know this is true because it happened to me. Then I read John Brogan's _Clear Technical Writing_ (McGraw-Hill, 1973) and the scales fell from my eyes. At first I could not understand what Brogan was talking about. His examples of "bad" writing appeared perfectly correct, even impressively articulate, to me. Then I began to grasp what Brogan was saying: if you write as directly as possible, your readers understand you more quickly. In a technical setting time is money. Every useless word or clumsy sentence costs money. Big money, if you have enough readers. Now I have changed my writing style completely. I still have much to learn, but now I critically examine my work on several levels, asking myself the following: - Individual words: does each contribute something? Technical writing has many bloated expressions. Use "to" instead of "in order to." Avoid unnecessary helping verbs like "serves to." Watch out for words and phrases like "in the process of," "in the event of," "purposes," "achieves," "accomplishes;" they usually mean a shorter sentence can do the same work. Stay away from pronouns that precede their referents: do not say "It is the X which does Y" when "The X does Y" is equivalent. Do not pad sentences with fluff like "it should be noted that..." State the facts and let the readers note them. - Sentences: do they clearly express the actor/action and object/attribute relationships you want to convey? Keep a subject and a corresponding verb close together. Separating them with subordinate clauses chokes the reader's short-term memory and forces re-reading. Subordinate clauses usually mean that several facts are trying to jam into a single sentence. Example: "The X, which is on the Z...(etc.), does Y."). Use multiple sentences instead. Do not turn action verbs into noun phrases: "The X generates Y" is better than "The X performs the generation of Y." Avoid passive voice ("Y is generated by X") unless you have a good reason to use it. Passive voice is usually more complex and less direct than active voice. My verbal reform is still at the word and sentence level, because I have so many bad habits from my years of reading technical literature. Eventually I may learn to organize concepts on the document level. Cheers, Dan Mocsny dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu
reggie@pdn.nm.paradyne.com (George W. Leach) (01/26/89)
In article <5803@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> dykimber@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Daniel Yaron Kimberg) writes: >In article <19443@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes: [some of my stuff about bias deleted] >>of those guys that says, "In my day, we trudged through 5 feet of snow >>to get to school, and we knew how to WRITE!" [I'm from LA, so I certainly >>couldn't talk about the snow stuff. :-) ] > >Okay, sorry, didn't mean to do that. Really? My father often told me how he walked through 5 feet of snow, for two miles, uphill, both ways :-) >>In fact, if you go back to my original postings, you'll see that I really >>was implicitly putting the blame on the FACULTY, for not adequately warning >>the students about the need for good verbal skills. >I'm more or less up in the air about this, but I think that the real >problem isn't with students or faculty, it's with something else, which >I don't really want to call "society", but for which I can't think of a better >term. I'd suspect that many if not all students, including myself, are >students for reasons other than education, although education may be one of >the reasons, even the top reason, for some. Ain't that the truth. Most undergrads don't really have a clear vision of what they want to do, let alone how to get the appropriate education to prepare to do it! Often a couse such as technical writing in an engineering curriculum may be overlooked and considered not important. The skills that are taught in such a course need to be stressed and reinforced in future courses that involve writing papers, reports, documentation, etc...... -- George W. Leach Paradyne Corporation ..!uunet!pdn!reggie Mail stop LG-129 Phone: (813) 530-2376 P.O. Box 2826 Largo, FL USA 34649-2826
wbralick@afit-ab.arpa (William A. Bralick) (01/26/89)
In article <614@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) writes: >In article <19443@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) writes: >> In my grad course last quarter, only 1 out of 15 reports >> was written clearly. [In fact, I heaped SO much praise on that one student >> for writing so well, that she must have been a bit puzzled. :-) ] >... >> In fact, if you go back to my original postings, you'll see that I really >> was implicitly putting the blame on the FACULTY, for not adequately warning >> the students about the need for good verbal skills. > >I heartily agree with this. The entire technical community has developed >many bad writing habits. Since engineering schools do not teach students >to write, students learn to write by subconsciously adapting to the >style they read. That style is frequently abysmal. How much of this can we attribute to publish-or-perish? J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and editor of the _Journal of Forecasting_, conducted his own analysis of academic writing and concluded that professors who wish to be published in the academic press must: "(1) _not_ pick an important problem, (2) _not_ challenge existing beliefs, (3) _not_ obtain surprising results, (4) _not_ use simple methods, (5) _not_ provide full disclosure of methodology, sources, and findings, and (6) _not_ write clearly." Armstrong, J. Scott "Barriers to Scientific Contributions: The Author's Formula" The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1982, p. 197 quoted by: Sykes, Charles J. ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education Regnery Gateway, Washington, D. C., 1988 Regards, -- Will Bralick : wbralick@afit-ab.arpa | If we desire to defeat the enemy, Air Force Institute of Technology, | we must proportion our efforts to | his powers of resistance. with disclaimer; use disclaimer; | - Carl von Clauswitz
dab@oswego.Oswego.EDU (Dave Bozak) (01/28/89)
In article <5464@pdn.nm.paradyne.com> reggie@pdn.nm.paradyne.com (George W. Leach) writes: > > Ain't that the truth. Most undergrads don't really have a clear vision >of what they want to do, let alone how to get the appropriate education to >prepare to do it! Often a couse such as technical writing in an engineering >curriculum may be overlooked and considered not important. The skills that >are taught in such a course need to be stressed and reinforced in future >courses that involve writing papers, reports, documentation, etc...... > THIS is the core of the issue. Students MUST see that there is a need, that the need is not some artificial "you'll be a better person..." type of scenario, and that, most importantly, you as an instructor demonstrate that the skill is important by serving as a role model. This is the response to the other postings about WWIII proclamations. If I start off each class by saying, "learn to write well or burn in hell and flunk my course to boot", then I am insulting (and will be ignored). If a WWIII proclamation is used for emphasis, to get started, and most importantly is reinforced in this first class and in subsequent classes, then the lesson is well learned. And I don't believe that many students have any idea how much of their professional lives will be spent writing memos, reports, reviews, etc. I see a great deal of math phobia spread throughout this campus, and there are many anecdotes of students who take a basic stats course 5 or 6 times before passing. Too often you will overhear faculty say something like, "yeah, you have to take calc. most students survive it..." when in fact they make use of that skill in their professional life. They ought instead to be illustrating just how that skill plays a role. Every discipline has some computational skill requirement, and it should be presented in a favorable (or at least neutral) manner. (Please, no flames about how you can design a curriculum in some discipline that doesn't need a computational skill...you would be wrong... :-) dave bozak department of computer science department of psychology suny college at oswego oswego, ny 13126 dab@rocky.oswego.edu
matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) (01/30/89)
In article <858@afit-ab.arpa> wbralick@blackbird.afit.af.mil (William A. Bralick) writes: >In article <614@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) writes: >>In article <19443@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) writes: *>> In my grad course last quarter, only 1 out of 15 reports *>> was written clearly. [In fact, I heaped SO much praise on that one student *>> for writing so well, that she must have been a bit puzzled. :-) ] *>> In fact, if you go back to my original postings, you'll see that I really *>> was implicitly putting the blame on the FACULTY, for not adequately warning *>> the students about the need for good verbal skills. *>I heartily agree with this. The entire technical community has developed *>many bad writing habits. Since engineering schools do not teach students *>to write, students learn to write by subconsciously adapting to the *>style they read. That style is frequently abysmal. *How much of this can we attribute to publish-or-perish? As a defender of publish-or-perish (to a reasonable degree), I would like to dispute this. Faculty's research ability surely would not be hurt by insisting that their students learn to write well. On the contrary, it would help research, because faculty wouldn't have to spend so much time rewriting their grad students' research papers in submission for publication. However, I definitely agree with what you said next: > J. Scott Armstrong, a professor at the University of > Pennsylvania's Wharton School and editor of the _Journal > of Forecasting_, conducted his own analysis of academic > writing and concluded that professors who wish to be > published in the academic press must: "(1) _not_ pick an > important problem, (2) _not_ challenge existing beliefs, > (3) _not_ obtain surprising results, (4) _not_ use simple I recently wrote a paper in which I showed existing beliefs were wrong. It was accepted by a prestigious conference in its area, and attracted a lot of attention. Yet when I sent an expanded version of the paper to a journal, the referee said, in essence, "The giants of this field never noticed a problem, so therefore you must be wrong." :-) [The paper is still under review, by a different referee.] Norm
tony@ajfcal.UUCP (Tony Field) (01/30/89)
In article <614@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) writes: >In article <19443@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>, matloff@bizet.Berkeley.EDU (Norman Matloff) writes: >... >> In fact, if you go back to my original postings, you'll see that I really >> was implicitly putting the blame on the FACULTY, for not adequately warning >> the students about the need for good verbal skills. > >I heartily agree with this. The entire technical community has developed >many bad writing habits. Since engineering schools do not teach students >to write, students learn to write by subconsciously adapting to the >style they read. That style is frequently abysmal. As an (long time) ex-student, I was under the impression that I was to acquire my verbal skills before entering university. The university assumed that such skills were provided by highschool and earlier education. "Warning" a highschool students about the need to acquire good verbal skills is probably six years too late for the warning to be effective. They have already "subsconsciously adapted to the style they read, write and listen to" in the public educational system. It is quite difficult for a "faculty" to erase the damage already done and replace the void with higher standards. .. comments from a non-educator.. tony... -- +------------------------------------ | Tony Field ..alberta!calgary!xenlink!ajfcal!tony | Co-Design Information Systems Ltd. | Calgary, Alberta, Canada
jlh@loral.UUCP (Physically Phffft) (01/31/89)
>I heartily agree with this. The entire technical community has developed >many bad writing habits. Since engineering schools do not teach students >to write, students learn to write by subconsciously adapting to the >style they read. That style is frequently abysmal. Hmmm, around here if you don't adapt your writing style to the one already in use you lose "brownie points". It doesn't make any difference if your own style is better or worse (I thought mine was better), if it's different it's automatically worse. This policy is directly attributable to 1 man, He Who Signs the Checks. Jim "I'm with George. A thousand pints of Lite, please" -- Jim Harkins jlh@loral.cts.com Loral Instrumentation, San Diego