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Subject:Re: Who is an ESL writer? From:Ryan Young <ryangyoung -at- gmail -dot- com> To:reshma pendse <reshma_pendse -at- yahoo -dot- co -dot- in> Date:Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:18:53 -0700
On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 10:27 AM, reshma pendse
<reshma_pendse -at- yahoo -dot- co -dot- in>wrote:
>
> What do you think? Would a standard certification requirement make it
> easier for hiring managers to separate the wheat from the chaff, and reduce
> the challenges of working with under-qualified people?
>
I don't think such a certification would be very useful for any kind of
writer, "ESL" or otherwise. As a few other people have mentioned in this
and some other recent threads, the only way to really judge a writer's
writing skills is to look at her writing. Native English speakers who hold
advanced degrees and are praised by some as "the smartest people on the
planet" can still produce writing that is really, really bad by pretty much
any standard. It's slightly off topic, but I am thinking here of the Bad
Writing Contest that used to hand out awards to the worst academic writing: http://denisdutton.com/bad_writing.htm
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