This might come across as a very strange question but is it uncommon to find engineers who did not enjoy school or think highly of the schools that they attended? I have encountered numerous computing and IT types over the years who did not enjoy school or had bad experiences at school but very few electrical or mechanical engineers.
Now within in an engineering team it is perfectly possible to have engineers who are excellent at their technical subject but are unable to communicate that effectively (for whatever reason) to the wider organisation or to customers etc. However the engineering team as a whole must be able to communicate effectively within itself and the (internal or external) customers, and that only works if some members of the team have those skills listed above.
How exactly is good communication in job advertisements even defined? Do writers of job advertisements even know themselves or do they just include good communication because every other job advertisement includes it?
I’m dubious as to whether many secondary school English teachers are even capable of teaching technical writing because they have never studied it themselves or needed to do it as part of a career. Instead their knowledge is about Shakespeare and poetry. English literature is a compulsory GCSE subject (I think it’s recently become optional in Wales) despite it having minimal relevance to everyday life and employment. The GCSE English language syllabus doesn’t go into business English in any depth, and there doesn’t appear to be a strong lobby to create a business and technical English GCSE as an alternative to literature.
To the best of my knowledge, it’s extremely rare for an engineering graduate to have studied English language, or a similar subject, beyond GCSE level.
Now within in an engineering team it is perfectly possible to have engineers who are excellent at their technical subject but are unable to communicate that effectively (for whatever reason) to the wider organisation or to customers etc. However the engineering team as a whole must be able to communicate effectively within itself and the (internal or external) customers, and that only works if some members of the team have those skills listed above.
How exactly is good communication in job advertisements even defined? Do writers of job advertisements even know themselves or do they just include good communication because every other job advertisement includes it?
I’m dubious as to whether many secondary school English teachers are even capable of teaching technical writing because they have never studied it themselves or needed to do it as part of a career. Instead their knowledge is about Shakespeare and poetry. English literature is a compulsory GCSE subject (I think it’s recently become optional in Wales) despite it having minimal relevance to everyday life and employment. The GCSE English language syllabus doesn’t go into business English in any depth, and there doesn’t appear to be a strong lobby to create a business and technical English GCSE as an alternative to literature.
To the best of my knowledge, it’s extremely rare for an engineering graduate to have studied English language, or a similar subject, beyond GCSE level.
