Re: Seeking advice on English MA

Subject: Re: Seeking advice on English MA
From: "Scott Holstad" <SHolstad -at- ci -dot- knoxville -dot- tn -dot- us>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2001 13:25:10 -0400

Elna,

Scott C. Holstad
Technical Writer
City of Knoxville
(865)215-4444
sholstad -at- ci -dot- knoxville -dot- tn -dot- us


>>> Elna Tymes <etymes -at- lts -dot- com> 04/18 5:52 PM >>>

<snip>

That said, however, advanced degrees tend to tell me two things: (1) the person is capable of independent research, and (2) the person is capable of communicating the results of that independent research in sufficiently clear form to pass scrutiny by a thesis review committee. And that has some valuable to me and my firm.


With all due respect, I disagree. When I was in grad school, I worked in the Writing Lab and as an English instructor. In both cases, I had grad students from other disciplines in my lab/class. I can't tell you how many times I encountered people who had no concept of sentence boundaries, and that's for starters. It was extremely discouraging. I was hired by another department to work with MS students on their thesis efforts. One student had to undergo 32 revisions and was finally given approval by the committee only because they wanted him out of there. (He was ex-military, I believe....)

I only write this because I think your anti-English bias is wrong and your assumption that students in other disciplines with advanced degrees can automatically communicate "sufficiently" is faulty.

My two or three cents....

Scott





^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

*** Deva(tm) Tools for Dreamweaver and Deva(tm) Search ***
Build Contents, Indexes, and Search for Web Sites and Help Systems
Available 4/30/01 at http://www.devahelp.com or info -at- devahelp -dot- com

Sponsored by DigiPub Solutions Corp, producers of PDF 2001 Conference East,
June 4-6, Baltimore, MD. Now covering Acrobat 5. Early registration deadline
April 27. http://www.pdfconference.com.

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.


Previous by Author: Re: Not again: certification?
Next by Author: Re: RE: Seeking advice on English MA
Previous by Thread: RE: Seeking advice on English MA
Next by Thread: Re: Seeking advice on English MA


What this post helpful? Share it with friends and colleagues:


Sponsored Ads