Today, it is believed that one must learn the necessary writing skills in order to be successful in life. But the main talk is whether writing is an essential skill that must be developed in an academic classroom or a professional workplace. Two Authors believe writing is an individualistic and personal process, and I’m here to advance those claims and settle this big dispute amongst the people.
I want to first start off with Jeffrey Selingo the Author of “Why can’t college graduates write coherent prose.” Selingo says,” employers want to hire college graduates who can write coherent, think creatively and analyze quantitative data” but my question is how and where do you learn these skills? I believe writing is better developed in an academic environment and with practice. You can’t be successful in a workplace if you don’t have the basic requirements to do the job successfully.
Secondly, William Zinsser Author of “THE TRANSACTION” and he states,” writing is a craft, not an art, and that the man who runs away from his craft because he lacks inspiration is fooling himself. He is also going broke.” Unlike myself he thinks writing to be more professional than fun, but I share Zinsser’s over-view that all writers process, write, and revise in their own personal way.
Writing was introduced in the classroom and it should be perfected in the classroom. On average 50% college students that graduate don’t know how to properly analyze written text at a college level and that percentage can easily increase or decrease depending on the school. Writing isn’t something you just do it takes practice, and Jeffrey Selingo believes,” …. Many college students, especially outside of writing-intensive liberal arts majors, are just not being asked to write enough.” Because of this a displacement is put on writing like a bad rumor and fewer people put forth an effort. But that shouldn’t be the case with writing, a classroom allows one to openly learn in their own way through trials and errors. You can’t get that same excitement from a normal workplace, but Jeffrey Selingo gives two good quotes that pretty much sum up why the classroom can be a better place to develop essential skill over the workplace. “They need to learn that the writing process is not linear and include prewriting, drafting, revising, editing and sharing…” and” Feedback shouldn’t just come from teachers, but also from peers. Many of the best writing teachers use the “workshop method” in their classes where students exchange drafts to critique.” Both quotes set individual tones that require personal interaction between peers and one’s self in order to fully develop skill. A workforce might provide peers, but you’re being robbed of your individualism in a work environment and you are expected to know the necessary skills already.
Nevertheless, writing does have its benefits in the workplace just as much as it does in the classroom. The learning aspect of writing has decreased as far as teaching go’s but writing skill can still increase through peer development. William Zinsser gives a good example,” Dr. Brock told me he was enormously interested in my answers… I told him I was just as interested in his answers – it had never occurred to me that writing could be easy.” Using someone’s answers to verbal questions in order to further your writing and understanding is part of the analyzing data column jobs look for. It’s important to understand most high-classed jobs are going to require these skills. To not only be business successful but economically successful writing must be a strong suit, but the irony of it all is not all jobs require writing skill.
My personal take on writing as a skill is simple, I believe that writing is the gate way drug to life, and what I mean by implying this is; writing contributes to the development of your ability to communicate, make decisions, and your time management. With these three abilities alone your chances of being successful have almost tripled, and that was just a scratch on the surface. Once you’ve started writing and developing through personal and emotional interaction it then becomes an addicting process. Writing is overlooked for the beauty that it is and as a result; more companies are dissatisfied, more professors are dissatisfied, and more relationships are dissatisfied. Failure to realize writing and communication go hand and hand leads to the confusion we have today and hinders the full development of writing as a skill.
In conclusion, the popular belief that one must learn the necessary writing skills in order to be successful in society is true. Although there is no right or wrong way of learning how to write; each path has its own unique adventures, but they all lead to the same accomplishment. It’s agreed that the academic classroom and workplace both provide great opportunities for a writer to further develop their writings, and Jeffrey Selingo the Author of “Why can’t college graduates write coherent prose” and William Zinsser Author of “THE TRANSACTION” both give the necessary evidence to prove that.
