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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
Joined: Aug 2000
Posts: 2,204 |
But it was the times tables which were my bete noir Yes, CapK, I always had problems with those - espec. the 7 times, for some reason! But learning by rote really works for that exercise, and I have, like you, been forever grateful that I was made to learn them. I also discovered the other day that I can still calculate in £-s-d - including division (!) - in my head. Now whether this says anything for my early training or just proves what a sad bastard I am, I'm not sure 
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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Sep 2000
Posts: 2,891 |
Question...
What on earth is calculating in LSD. The only LSD I am aware of is the stuff the hippies used to take in the 70`s that made them trippy.
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Joined: Mar 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
Joined: Mar 2000
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What on earth is calculating in LSD.Ooh, bel--what an invitation! 
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Joined: Mar 2000
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old hand
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old hand
Joined: Mar 2000
Posts: 1,004 |
belM
What you interpreted (cleverly) as LSD, are actually the symbols for currency in the UK, pre-1970: £(Pounds), s (Shillings) and d(Pence - from denarii, don't ask, we were very influenced by the Romans). The reason why Rhuby is proud of his ability to use it is not because he was hippy-trippy in the '60s (though he may well have been - given the tale of his car and its decorations), but because the currency, not being decimal, was virtually impossible to calculate in - almost as bad as doing multiplication and division in Roman Numerals.
cheer
the sunshine (glad to have lived primarily in decimal times) warrior
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Joined: Nov 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Yes, but trying to calculate in LSD while nicely stoked on LSD would surely be an interesting way to pass the time. One of my younger colleagues informs me that she can't do anything involving mental effort while on ecstacy. She seemed unimpressed with my rejoinder that I often have problems with or without mind-altering substances - with the sole exception of caffeine.  Still - what's wrong with twelve pence to the shilling, twenty shillings to the pound and twenty-one to the guinea? It was only 1967 when we changed in New Zealand. I remember it all very well ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866
old hand
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old hand
Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 866 |
If you've seen my profile you'll know 2 key things about me - I'm a wordaholic AND I'm a Recruitment Consultant for a company similar to your Sheffield Consulting I believe. So, for the past 7 years in this job I have been tormented daily by this matter.
I place around 50-60 people per year, representing around 2,500 applicants per year. Add to this a substantial number of unsolicited enquiries & CV's and we're talking 3,000 CV's per year over my desk.
Amongst other things, we test each shortlisted candidate's "Verbal Reasoning" skills and report them as a percentile against an appropriate statistical population (in our case between 500 and 5000 previous "test-ees" - bit of recruitment humour there!!) As we are inevitably dealing with tertiary qualified people, it is (I suppose) pleasing to report that the great majority fall in the upper 50th percentile - because we're comparing them to each other and not ranking them by the correctness.
The crunch comes when doing referee checks - I doubt if there's been more than 1 or 2 final candidates over the past 7 years whose referees praised their report writing skills. Most referees tend to be 40-60 years old and thus, like me, place weight upon spelling and writing skills. However they almost all inevitably sigh and say (after giving me the bad news), "Well, that's the way it seems to be these days".
Unfortunately Cap K, IT seems to be the worst hit area. I've no doubt that this is due to the overwhelming percentage of IT specialists that have English as a 2nd language. Inevitably it is not rated as a serious problem by the employer though - they are more interested in the candidate's technical skills and their "Abstract Reasoning" (ie problem solving) score. Pleasingly, most lie in the top 10th percentile - they are bright cookies.
Simply speaking, I believe the weight you and I place upon literacy is a dying thing an dthat nothing can or will be done about it. Pessimist no, realist yes.
And now, more recruitment humour....
Irrespective of their programming ability, I for one get all heated up when the page designer puts poor English onto company web pages. When I was looking to sign up with an ISP, I researched the pages of the local companies to compare rates etc. One Perth-based company was signing its own praises loudly and promoting itself as "your partner is small business" etc for ISP, web page design and so on. Well, the splash page alone had 13 howlers!! I couldn't help myself so, with tongue firmly in cheek, emailed the Managing Director (who'd thoughtfully provided his direct email address for the purpose). I pointed out the errors one by one (no small task!!) and then suggested that, seeing I was in recruitment, maybe we could talk about recruiting a proof reader for the web design aspects of his compay's service.
Never heard from him - BUT the site was fixed within the week!!
stales
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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I wouldn't class myself as a wordaholic (a view probably resoundingly seconded by the rest of the crew on this board), but I do have standards. My firm uses a form of the VIT which is, I believe, not standard. It actually makes people consider the syntactic and semantic content of what they are responding to rather than just allowing them to scan for the general sense. Don't ask me for details; I don't have 'em - that's our HR people's job and one which I'm quite happy to leave them to. Obviously, nothing in what you say surprises me, but thanks for the corroboration that it's not just a local problem. My problem is that I get involved in recruitment of people who must have a good mix of technical (for content) and written (for presentation and clarity) skills. In other words, we're hiring them for their ability to write reports as much, if not more, than for their ability to write programs, design networks, write HTML or whatever. As a matter of fact since I started this thread off I've persuaded the general manager that a dedicated technical writer/proofreader with good mentoring skills is a necessary addition to the team, and that getting the right skills will not be cheap. It's going into the 2001/2 budget and I'll be putting the JD out to our preferred recruitment agencies at the beginning of February. The process takes about three weeks once we have identified the candidates. Note that most of our candidates are native English speakers. Or English writers gone native in most cases, unfortunately ... We've been tossing around ideas about how to raise the general standards of literacy (any suggestion would be MOST welcome). One suggestion was that we should use our training department to do the work. However I pointed out that the standards of literacy among the trainers (including the ones "teaching" business writing) were none too solid. This is a work in progress, unfortunately, with no agreed approach determined yet. My ISP (ClearNet) is actually very good. They obviously have someone who can read and write without difficulty managing their site content. But, like you, I have seen some real doozies. Unlike you, I couldn't give a rat's a--, and haven't bothered trying to change them! 
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Joined: Sep 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Depending upon the way you present your proofreader, you might be able to give him a secondary role as teacher. For example, if the proofreader simply corrects other people’s work nobody really learns anything. But if the proofreader underlines the things that must be corrected and has the person correct his own errors, then, that tends to stick in a person’s mind (remember your school days).
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Joined: Nov 2000
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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Posts: 3,146 |
That had crossed my mind, bel. However, we are generally - not always, but usually - up against tight time constraints. Pogoing a report back and forth with marked corrections/corrected prose is a luxury. Well, we'll see!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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we are generally - not always, but usually - up against tight time constraints. Pogoing a report back and forth with marked corrections/corrected prose is a luxury.Dear CapK, Our newspaper took the approach that a two-hour meeting every other week was do-able and an English teacher came in and shredded our egos -- no, not really, -- by the simple expedient of reading some of the stuff we wrote then telling us why it was wrong and how not to do it again. Long involved sentences : recast. Long words : simplify. etc. etc. He was strong and cut to the bone but never named a name or placed blame. We all improved. What tickled the reporters most was that he presumed headlines were fair game, too. Some  red faced editors who had thought they were safe were quite taken aback.  I was so impressed I talked him into doing a savaging of my deathless prose once a month and paid for it myself. It was great! In his defense I must say my prose has deteriorated since I left the biz and no longer have available his pithy observations on my current efforts. This any help? wow
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