Jose Carillo's English Forum - Advice and Dissent

ADVICE AND DISSENT

This section features discussions on education, learning and teaching, and language with particular focus on English. The primary subjects to be taken up here are notable advocacies and contrary viewpoints in these disciplines and their allied fields. Our primary aim is to clarify matters and issues of importance to language and learning, provide intelligent and useful instruction, promote rational and critical thinking, and enhance the individual’s overall capacity for discernment.

Despite modern communication tools, proper language stays supreme

In a poll he conducted recently, Seattle-based syndicated columnist and headhunter Nick Corcodilos posed this question: With technologies such as texting, instant messaging, and spell-checking now available today, do we still need to worry about grammar and proper use of language as important elements of job or business success?

Upon reviewing the results of what he called “The Headhunter Challenge Poll,” Corcodilos responded by writing that the proper use of language is as important as ever despite all these modern communication technologies.

“Illiteracy reveals ignorance,” says the author of Ask The Headhunter: Reinventing the Interview to Win the Job, “and ignorance suggests incompetence. Even when you think no one notices, they do. People won’t correct you, but they won’t forget that you are uneducated. Stop being defensive and cut out the excuses and rationalizations. Learn how to use words to get what you want in life, in business and in your career.”

In short, he says, “learn how to use language properly and then practice it.”

Read Nick Corcodilos’s “Is ‘proper’ use of language overrated?" now!

View the complete list of postings in this section
(requires registration to view & post)