Assessing writing skills
Writing is more than word order: clear writing relies on several techniques:
Quality writing is a skill which can be learnt with clarity and comprehension the end result.
The purpose of the below task is to establish how we can improve our writing. By understanding our weaknesses and strengths, improving becomes more effective.
Writing is more than word order: clear writing relies on several techniques:
- word choice | the words we use need to fit the context
- consistency | style and structure are similar throughout the text
- cohesion | everything fits together
- coherence | ideas naturally flow with the writer clearly guiding the reader
- balance | structures are evenly weighted
Quality writing is a skill which can be learnt with clarity and comprehension the end result.
The purpose of the below task is to establish how we can improve our writing. By understanding our weaknesses and strengths, improving becomes more effective.
What your writing appraisal will show
WHAT IS YOUR OPINION?
Working from home is better for the environment, and better for us.
Working from home is better for the environment, and better for us.
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To help you answer the above statement, the below extracts are about working from home.
[The source websites are encoded within the name] |
Note
This is not a test or exam! The assessment is only designed to evaluate writing:
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SOURCE ONE
Andrew Monk, a City chief executive, is not a fan of government proposals for new staff to have the right to ask to work from home. "People abuse it," and are less productive, at least in financial services, he told the BBC. His view is that a lot of people who ask for flexible working want to work part-time but on a full-time salary. The government, however, says that allowing flexible working makes businesses more productive. It is proposing that from the first day of employment new starters can request flexible working, rather than having to wait at least six months, as is the case at the moment. Under the proposals people can request flexible working such as job sharing, flexi-time, or working from home. Employers won't have to agree to the request. [BBC] |
SOURCE TWO
Women who work mostly from home risk seeing their careers stall now workers are returning to the office in large numbers, according to Bank of England (BoE) economist Catherine Mann. She said office interaction was vital to advance in companies, but many women were still tied to home working. Ms Mann said it was a particular issue for mothers facing school disruptions and difficulty accessing childcare. "There is the potential for two tracks," she said. "There's the people who are on the virtual track and people who are on a physical track. And I do worry that we will see those two tracks develop, and we will pretty much know who's going to be on which track, unfortunately," she said. [BBC] |
SOURCE THREE
“Working from home isn’t an option in my business,” he told me. “I don’t buy into it. I want my people here.”
Is he out of touch? Perhaps. But this point of view is shared by more than a few clients of mine. Mostly, they fit a similar demographic: older, set in their ways, long time in business, family-owned companies. It’s obvious that most companies will need to offer work from home options in the future. But what’s more obvious, at least to me, is that so far, this has been a failed experiment. And, sooner or later, many small businesses are going to come around to thinking like my client.
If you don’t believe me, then just consider the results of a recent, large study from Microsoft.
According to the study, almost two-thirds of the more than 31,000 full-time employed or self-employed workers across 31 markets said that they were “craving” (yes, craving) more in-person time with their teams and 37% of the global workforce complained that their companies were “asking too much of them” when out of the office.
About 54% of these people feel overworked and 39% are simply exhausted. Thanks to these new working from home arrangements, meetings are significantly longer, “chats” have risen 45% and 41m more emails were sent in one month alone (February 2021) compared with the same month last year (remember when email was supposed to be “dead”?).
So now do you see where my client is coming from? He wants his people back in the office where he can see them, talk to them, brainstorm with them, connect with them. He’s old school. And he’s probably not wrong on this.
Unfortunately, the work from home trend is too strong to resist. That’s because there’s this illusion of more independence, flexibility and control over one’s life which is probably why 70% of the workers who participated in the Microsoft survey, despite all their concerns, still desire some type of flexible work options in the future.
There are also powerful interests at work to keep us at home. Big tech firms like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Apple love these arrangements because it ties their customers even further to their cloud-based collaboration subscription models. The giant media providers see more people at home clicking on their content. Big retail firms are enjoying the surge in online sales driven by bored, unsupervised workers. And corporate employers are sniffing big savings in real estate costs as well as the ability to hire better (and cheaper) talent regardless of geographic limitations.
[The Guardian]
“Working from home isn’t an option in my business,” he told me. “I don’t buy into it. I want my people here.”
Is he out of touch? Perhaps. But this point of view is shared by more than a few clients of mine. Mostly, they fit a similar demographic: older, set in their ways, long time in business, family-owned companies. It’s obvious that most companies will need to offer work from home options in the future. But what’s more obvious, at least to me, is that so far, this has been a failed experiment. And, sooner or later, many small businesses are going to come around to thinking like my client.
If you don’t believe me, then just consider the results of a recent, large study from Microsoft.
According to the study, almost two-thirds of the more than 31,000 full-time employed or self-employed workers across 31 markets said that they were “craving” (yes, craving) more in-person time with their teams and 37% of the global workforce complained that their companies were “asking too much of them” when out of the office.
About 54% of these people feel overworked and 39% are simply exhausted. Thanks to these new working from home arrangements, meetings are significantly longer, “chats” have risen 45% and 41m more emails were sent in one month alone (February 2021) compared with the same month last year (remember when email was supposed to be “dead”?).
So now do you see where my client is coming from? He wants his people back in the office where he can see them, talk to them, brainstorm with them, connect with them. He’s old school. And he’s probably not wrong on this.
Unfortunately, the work from home trend is too strong to resist. That’s because there’s this illusion of more independence, flexibility and control over one’s life which is probably why 70% of the workers who participated in the Microsoft survey, despite all their concerns, still desire some type of flexible work options in the future.
There are also powerful interests at work to keep us at home. Big tech firms like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Apple love these arrangements because it ties their customers even further to their cloud-based collaboration subscription models. The giant media providers see more people at home clicking on their content. Big retail firms are enjoying the surge in online sales driven by bored, unsupervised workers. And corporate employers are sniffing big savings in real estate costs as well as the ability to hire better (and cheaper) talent regardless of geographic limitations.
[The Guardian]
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