It’s that time of year again. Reading through and marking a pile of exam scripts is always a chore, because of the time it takes out of the week when there are other things that need doing, because of the tight deadlines that often need to be met, and because of the care and attention that one needs to put into it (quite rightly). Most of all, however, the thing that I find most difficult, is having to read through scripts by students who can’t spell or can’t write coherent sentences. This is not just something I encounter in exam scripts, but in all sorts of other documents produced by students at all levels, undergraduate and postgraduate.
So it is interesting to see that it’s not just academics who suffer. According to Recruitment and Employment Commission reports The Guardian this week (2 June 2007), “Around half of all CVs received by recruitment consultants contain spelling or grammatical errors, and these are most likely to be made by those aged between 21 and 25.”
The impressions left by well written or poorly written documents are so important that they can often have as great an impact as the content of the document. I advise all my students that they should take a huge amount of care over writing, but far too many turn in sloppy work.
So, a word of advice to anyone starting a course at university: in addition to studying your courses, work at your writing skills during your entire degree programme. There’s no point getting a degree if you can’t get people to read your CV and employ you. Impressions count!
