This poll is part of a series that Grammarly is running aimed at better understanding how the public feels about writing, language learning, and grammar.
Please take the poll and share your thoughts in the comments. We can’t wait to hear from you!
If you are interested in more, check out last week’s poll.
Today marks the fifty-first anniversary of International Literacy Day, a holiday that recognizes literacy as “a foundation to build a more sustainable future for all.” Started in 1966 by UNESCO as a day to recognize literacy programs worldwide, this day continues to remind world leaders that universal literacy has not been accomplished. Far from it, in fact: in 2013, the adult (25 or older) literacy rate was 85 percent worldwide, and the population of illiterate adults was 757 million. But why does this number seem so high?
Before we look at the current data, let’s take a look at how literacy has been defined in the past and what it looks like today. According to Merriam-Webster, literacy carries two definitions: “the ability to read and write” and “knowledge that relates to a specified subject.” The second definition is generally used in specific technical or academic settings. The first, however, maps back to the traditional requirements for literacy, the “three Rs” of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Back in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, education in these areas was reserved for members of the upper classes. It wasn’t until the early 1900s that discussion of universal literacy began.
When UNESCO held its first summit on literacy in 1966, the “three R” approach was held as the standard. They also focused on “eradicating” illiteracy in certain regions, which led to some forced non-native language learning in populations where written language for a certain dialect wasn’t accepted by national governments.
However, in 1970, a change began to take hold of the literacy community. Instead of viewing illiteracy as an evil that needed to be conquered, educational leaders focused on “functional literacy,” which emphasizes the ways literacy leads to economic growth for individuals and entire communities.
Today, UNESCO and others focus on literacy as a way to empower people and allow them to attain better employment, wages, and other economic benefits. Reading isn’t just for fun, it’s a vital measure of a person’s or community’s ability to tap into the global economy.
Since literacy is now seen in the context of economic and social prosperity, let’s contextualize some literacy statistics. As mentioned before, around 15 percent of the worldwide population is considered illiterate by UNESCO standards, and this percentage represents 757 million individuals. According to an international literacy test administered from 2012 to 2014, the worldwide average of adults who scored at or below the lowest reading level is 16 percent of those surveyed. In the US, this number is 18 percent, a full two percentage points over the international average.
But what does this mean to the lives of those in the 16 percent?
According to a recent analysis, life expectancy and literacy have a positive relationship, meaning that populations with high literacy rates also tend to live longer. The relationship between reading and lifespan is supported by other studies, but it also makes logical sense because literacy is tied to economic development, which has been shown to increase life expectancy as well. Perhaps it’s time for us to consider literacy as important a human right as clean water, healthcare access, and nutrition. It clearly has serious effects.
Today’s digital landscape means that literacy is more important than ever to upward economic mobility. In a world where 87 percent of people in the US and 45 percent of people worldwide report owning a smartphone, it’s important to give every person the ability to fully connect to and benefit from the Internet. To learn more about the state of literacy education and research today, check out UNESCO.org to learn more about International Literacy Day.
Workplace communication shouldn’t be this difficult.
Your team is mere days out from releasing the project you’ve all been agonizing over for weeks. There have been flurries of emails and messages, presentations, a legal review, and an afternoon of confusing discussions leading to charts drawn on whiteboards with markers that turned out not to be dry-erase. Oops.
Above all, there have been meetings—so many meetings. There was the quick daily kind where people said what they were working on, or more often sidetracked by. Then there was a punishingly long session involving dozens of slides about user metrics; by the end of that one you were quietly daydreaming about taking up kickboxing lessons.
Still, all those rambling discussions and endless email threads somehow failed to avert a looming fiasco. Now no one seems to be on the same page, and your deadline is ticking relentlessly closer. What you have here is an abject lesson about communication in the workplace—or lack thereof.
How effectively you and your colleagues communicate says a lot about how well work is going more generally. It’s hard to get things done efficiently when no one has a clear plan. People can flounder when they don’t see a good way to discuss fresh opportunities—let alone unforeseen challenges.
That’s why we’re here with a few tips to improve your communication skills in the workplace.
There are many ways to connect—and misconnect. Choose wisely.
Emails may be de rigueur, but they’re also easily buried. Video conferences add a humanizing touch if someone’s working remotely, but they can be unwieldy. Basic phone calls are sometimes underrated, but you’ll often want to schedule in advance, or at least start by asking whoever you’re calling if it’s an okay time to talk.
The advantage of real-time conversation is how much it can clarify in a short amount of time while saving both parties a huge amount of typing back and forth. Be judicious about lining up meetings with multiple parties; this can easily become a chore, so you have to expect a worthwhile return to justify the effort.
As with work, which Parkinson’s Law states will expand to fill as much time as is allotted for it, so too with meetings. Set a time limit and an agenda. Budget how long you’ll spend on each item before moving on. The idea here is to respect your participants’ time, so communicate transparently about this; doing so will help you avoid seeming overly brusque as you shepherd things along.
Potential rabbit holes abound in any discussion—and some might be worth following up on, at least among a subset of participants. For instance, if your designer realizes a new template that’s getting the go-ahead will soon require updated text, then she and her trusty copywriter can discuss those details after the meeting—not while the dev crew looks on and tries not to yawn. A handy turn of phrase for situations like this: “Let’s take it offline.”
If something matters, it’s usually worth repeating.
Sometimes when dealing with complex subjects or ongoing processes, it’s helpful to remind people of the basics. You don’t have to belabor it. Consider this quick example:
“All right, this conference call is to update key players on prototyping. We’re trying to manufacture a better dog bed by fall, ahead of holiday sales, so we have a lot of work to do in terms of optimizing drool resistance. On the call last week, Susan informed us the supplier anticipates an eight-week turnaround. That means we need to settle on dimensions this month. Let’s talk about next steps. Who’s first?”
This quick recap falls well short of a lecture while still accomplishing a lot:
That last part will bear repeating later, but in the meantime, if your preamble has saved someone an awkward question or confused email, it’s done its job. And if you’re worried about spending too much time retracing your footsteps, just ask if you should skip ahead; your colleagues might surprise you by saying no.
It can also help to devise new ways to spell out key ideas—using different words or possibly different channels of communication, like a follow-up email that crystallizes the main takeaways from a meeting and who’s in charge of key action items going forward.
Alex Blumberg, the radio journalist-turned-entrepreneur who founded Gimlet Media, told Tape that despite his many years as a professional communicator, it took awhile to recognize the significance of helping coworkers understand:
When people say the same thing, it has different resonance, comes from a different place or means different things to different people… A big part of my job now is saying the same thing a bunch of different ways just so people understand where it’s coming from. If you just say it once, there’s no guarantee that people heard it the way you said it.
In other words, if something is important enough to bear repeating, it’s likely also worth rephrasing.
Especially with technical matters, restating key ideas can also help you make sure you properly understand something new. If there’s time, try asking the person explaining it if you can restate their point in your own words, and ask if you’re getting it right. If there’s an important detail you missed, this is a good opportunity to get help grasping it.
Intentionally or not, how you comport your body communicates a lot. For instance, do you appear closed off with your arms folded, or actively engaged, say by talking with your hands? It’s worth considering, lest you send the wrong message with your posture or facial expression.
Maybe as a colleague concludes a presentation and looks around the room, you seem to glower—not because the presentation was bad, but because you’re lost in thought. In moments like this, it’s sometimes worthwhile to explain yourself: “That wasn’t bad at all, I just need a moment to process. Let’s circle back in a moment.”
It’s not unheard of for people to meet for an hour, raise a series of worthwhile questions, ponder potential answers, resolve nothing, and then realize it’s time to leave for another meeting. This is where follow-up notes can help ensure whatever headway you might’ve been making doesn’t just vanish out the door.
If you can avoid sending lengthy emails to long strings of recipients, it’s probably for the better. But if you must, you might also include a tl;dr (“too long; didn’t read”) that briefly encapsulates the highlights. Put it at the top so that guy in logistics who only seems to skim will at least lay eyes on the essentials.
A quick word of thanks or a well-timed smile can go a long way toward helping your officemates feel appreciated and understood.
If that makes people want to talk with you more, well, isn’t that what better workplace communication is all about?
At your local coffee shop, do you ever see words that you don’t understand? For instance, what is java? Why is a cup of coffee called a cup of joe? Ordering a cup of coffee can feel like speaking another language! No worries, here are the meanings behind all the coffee words.
Let’s start with the words that just refer to a simple cup of coffee. The first and most puzzling is joe. No one really knows how that got started, but some think that joe may derive from java. Java, besides referring to coffee, is also an island in Indonesia where coffee is grown. Decaf is decaffeinated coffee. An espresso is a dark roast coffee brewed with hot water and pressure.
Do you add something to your coffee? Doing so might result in a name change! Let’s start with milk. If you only put a small to moderate amount of steamed milk in your espresso, you are drinking a macchiato. A cappuccino has a lot of frothy steamed milk. If the proportion of hot milk to coffee is two to one, it’s cafe au lait. If the proportion is three to one, it’s a cafe latte. Add a little boiling water instead of milk and it’s a cafe americano. The addition of chocolate makes the drink a mocha. You can even serve coffee with ice cubes, but that one is easy—iced coffee. It usually includes cream and sugar.
Rather than small, medium, and large, some coffee shops use their own units of measurement. For example, at one popular chain the smallest drinks are called short and tall. Rather than being the largest, grande is overshadowed by the venti and trenta, which contain as much as 31 ounces of liquid.
With all the different coffee drinks, no wonder there’s a special name for the talented ones who serve it—baristas. They speak the language. Now, what kind of coffee will you order next?
A cardinal axiom of good writing, “show, don’t tell” reminds authors that language is infinitely more vivid and poignant when it appeals to the senses. Writing that does this has an amnesic effect on readers, ensconcing them so deeply in the story that they forget they’re reading a story at all. Perhaps the most apt tool to cast this spell on readers is figurative language, which employs various devices that imply meaning rather than plainly stating it. Here are five figurative devices that will breathe new life into your writing by compelling the reader to look beyond the obvious.
The Double Epithet
An epithet is an adjective or phrase that expresses attributes of a person or thing, such as “Alexander the Great.” Considered a device of poetic diction, epithets abound in famous poetry, especially Homer’s. For example, he coined phrases like “the rosy-fingered dawn” and “the wine-dark sea.” Epithets have even more figurative force in pairs, known as double epithets. Shakespeare was especially fond of this tool, penning classics like “mad mustachio purple-hued maltworms,” “beslubbering swag-bellied ratsbane,” and “roguish tickle-brained fustilarian.”
Anaphora
Used as both a rhetorical and poetic device, anaphora refers to parallelism created by successive lines or phrases beginning with the same words. Poetically, the recurring sounds produce a driving rhythm that can intensify the language’s emotionality. Rhetorically, anaphora lends emphasis to concepts. Anaphora appears frequently in the work of Charles Dickens (e.g., “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”) and also figures prominently in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech (King repeats the phrase “I have a dream” eight times in the closing paragraphs of the address).
Alliteration
This literary device repeats consonant sounds in a sentence or verse, typically, but not always, at the beginning of a word. Alliteration can give writing character and add an element of whimsy. Strategically, alliterative devices draw the reader’s attention to a particular passage, set a mood and rhythm, and can suggest certain connotations. For instance, a recurring “S” sound connotes a serpent-like quality, suggesting treachery and peril. Poe’s line “And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain” from The Raven uses alliteration, as does Beowulf‘s “Hot-hearted Beowulf was bent upon battle.”
Onomatopoeia
Appealing to the aural senses, onomatopoeia uses words imitative of sounds, such as quack, boom, whoosh, whir, hiss, crunch, crack, and swish. Paradoxically, onomatopoeia can add both frivolity and reality to writing, as it quirkily yet accurately mimics common sounds. The Alka Seltzer slogan “pop, pop, fizz, fizz, oh, what a relief it is” uses this device, as does Poe’s line from the poem The Bells “How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle in the icy air of night!”
Hyperbole
When authors intentionally overstate for effect, they employ hyperbole. These exaggerations can be ludicrous or funny and help the author make a salient point. An excerpt from Monty Python’s “Four Yorkshiremen rel=”nofollow”” skit illustrates this device perfectly as used for comedic effect. In describing how poor he was, one of the characters says, “I had to get up in the morning at 10 o’clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work 29 hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing ‘Hallelujah’.”
If variety is the spice of life, figurative language is the cayenne pepper of prose, figuratively speaking. So what are your most clever or creative uses of figurative language?
So you’ve decided to write more. That’s your goal, your resolution.
You’re there; the keyboard is there. Maybe in your head you’re repeating “you can do it, you can do it,” getting pumped for the outpouring of productivity, the astronomical wordcount that will no doubt ensue at any moment now.
Yep, at any second, we’re going to kick into high gear and—Hang on, let’s put on some coffee first. And while that’s warming up, we might as well start a load of laundry. Oops, we’ll get back to the keyboard in one second, and we’ll really rip into this writing thing as soon as—Actually, I just got some email, I should check this…
Getting into the discipline of writing isn’t easy. Even people who do it for a living sometimes dread it, and often procrastinate. But if writing is what calls to you, we’ve put together some thoughts on how to cement it as a new habit.
If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others; read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.
Stephen King, the author of On Writing as well as dozens of novels, urges writers to constantly have a book on hand. (He’s also far from the only wordsmith to lay into the distraction of television. The late David Foster Wallace counselled writers not to mistake watching shows for observing actual humans in the wild: “The dots are coming out of our furniture, all we’re spying on is our own furniture,” Wallace wrote.)
In the smartphone era, doing away with all manner of distraction in order to lug around a three-pound book may sound like unwieldy, curmudgeonly advice. The key here is knowing it’s easier to replace an existing habit with a new one than to erase an old habit altogether.
For instance, you might wonder when you’re supposed to have the time to read more, while also hemorrhaging precious hours over the course of each week perusing mundane social media. But if you want to take King’s advice, your phone doesn’t have to be an enemy; thanks to a variety of apps, it can be a library, both for reading and for listening to audiobooks. So rather than looking at your old classmates’ depressing vacation photos, you can open a book on your phone and begin enriching yourself as a reader.
And reading, King continues, can inform how you write, even if what you’re reading this week happens to be dreck:
I don’t read in order to study the craft; I read because I like to read. It’s what I do at night, kicked back in my blue chair. Similarly, I don’t read fiction to study the art of fiction, but simply because I like stories. Yet there is a learning process going on. Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.
In other words, while you may want to write brilliantly, you’re under no obligation to choose strictly brilliant books to read.
If you were to take up running for the first time (as Haruki Murakami did when he first became a novelist), you probably wouldn’t expect to finish a marathon your first day, or even in your first month.
The work of writing is similar. It’s easy to forget, when you’re reading neatly assembled words on a page or a screen, that a human sat somewhere and labored to organize each thought. Writer Harlan Ellison used to remind people of this fact by demonstrating it in public; he would sit in bookstore windows and mash out page after page. “By doing it in public, I show people it’s a job,” he said, “like being a plumber or an electrician.”
Some people set out a goal of drafting their entire book in one month, but it’s a tall ask. King’s goal for himself is about two thousand words daily, including holidays; he suggests neophytes start by aiming for a thousand daily, six days a week.
Specifically, he recommends you find a room with a door on it, close that door, and stay there until you hit your goal. But in an era when people publish novels composed entirely via mobile phone and articles drafted using speech recognition while walking around New York, you’re not necessarily confined to King’s strict regimen of solitude and dad-rock. (The dude loves AC/DC.)
Indeed, no matter how you write or who you are, “writing is hard for every last one of us” as author Cheryl Strayed noted in her seminal pep talk on the subject, continuing: “Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.”
I know it’s hard to write, darling. But it’s harder not to. The only way you’ll find out if you ‘have it in you’ is to get to work and see if you do.
If this all sounds daunting, take heart; journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates has called the very task of writing “an act of physical courage.”
Much of writing can be a battle with an inner editor—a voice reading each word as you write it, declaring “no, that’s not good enough. Rework this. Strike all of that. Do it better.” Managing to shut this voice up is no small feat, but doing so is crucial, explains Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, among others.
Calling perfectionism “the voice of the oppressor,” she argues that perfect can be the enemy of the good, or perhaps the hey-at-least-it’s-finally-done first draft, continuing:
Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist’s true friend. What people somehow (inadvertently, I’m sure) forgot to mention when we were children was that we need to make messes in order to find out who we are and why we are here—and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing.
Lamott also warns that while writing is essential, “publication is not all that it is cracked up to be,” suggesting it’s perhaps better to see your new writing goal as its own reward than as a career path. On this point, she is echoed by King:
If I don’t write every day, the characters begin to stale off in my mind—they begin to seem like characters instead of real people. The tale’s narrative cutting edge starts to rust and I begin to lose my hold on the story’s plot and pace. Worst of all, the excitement of spinning something new begins to fade. The work starts to feel like work, and for most writers that is the smooch of death. Writing is at its best—always, always, always—when it is a kind of inspired play for the writer.
As you cement your writing goals into habits, don’t forget to have fun. We believe in your victory.
Many people dream of living and working in the USA, but no one would claim it’s easy. To secure a work visa, you’ll need a job offer before you leave – which means perfecting your CV is more important than ever. Don’t simply roll out the CV you’ve been using at home; there are a few key differences you’ll need to know first. Before you hit send, check through this list of tips to make sure American employers can easily see what a great candidate you are.
While languages as diverse as Arabic, Spanish and British English use the term (short for the Latin curriculum vitae) American English prefers the term résumé. It’s important not to neglect this detail as the term CV is used in America, but only in academia.
In many countries it’s normal to include a photo of yourself, and it’s tempting to try to get the employer to picture you in the office, looking dynamic and ready to work. But the USA has strict laws concerning discrimination, so employers can’t be seen to be making decisions based on any aspect of your appearance. You should also remove any details about your marital status, ethnicity, date or place of birth, parents’ names or religion. All you need in terms of personal information is your name, contact details and where to find you on LinkedIn.
The name change signals a change of attitude. This is a summary of your skills and achievements, rather than a detailed account of your working life. On average, employers spend only six seconds looking at your résumé! Aim for a single page, or two at the very most. Cut out irrelevant hobbies or unrelated positions you held years ago. After your contact details, recruiters will be looking for:
If English is your second language, you may be tempted to prove your proficiency by including your TOEFL score. Don’t! Your fluency should speak for itself. But the fact that you are bilingual is a big bonus – list it under skills.
Should you write “Maria has exceptional organizational skills,” or “I have exceptional organizational skills?” This question raises some surprisingly strong feelings. Not so long ago, the advice was to use the third person, and some employers still feel this avoids the impression that you’re just stating your own opinion of yourself. On the other hand, you are stating your opinion of yourself, and as a result many employers hate third person résumés, finding them weird and artificial. Our advice: where a pronoun is unavoidable, use “I,” but in so-called “résumese,” it’s acceptable to avoid pronouns altogether and even to drop the occasional verb. For example: “A manager with exceptional organizational skills. Successfully increased staff retention by 50%.”
Whatever you do, don’t mix “I” with “he/she”!
American culture isn’t big on modesty. Where some cultures would see boastfulness, Americans see confidence and straightforwardness. This doesn’t mean you should make grandiose claims of personal perfection, but it does mean that when explaining your employment history, you should focus on the successes you achieved, not just your duties and responsibilities. You can approach this by avoiding the passive voice and by replacing verbs like “worked on,” “handled” and “was responsible for” with bolder alternatives like “accomplished,” “created,” “increased,” “transformed” or “led,” as well as by giving specific examples of your results.
For example, “handled fundraising” could become “raised $105,000 in new donations in 2017.” Don’t worry about showing off – if you think back, you’ll probably find more relevant achievements than you expect!
Don’t claim to be “passionate” about your field – is anyone really passionate about, say, data management? And even if your work truly is your passion, the word is so overused that it no longer communicates anything. Instead, tell a story that demonstrates your depth of commitment in your cover letter, or include a bullet point that showcases the results your enthusiasm has helped you achieve. Don’t claim to be a “good team player” or “hard worker” and don’t boast of your “communication skills.” These are vague virtues that employers will tend to assume everyone should have! Give examples of times you’ve taken on extra responsibility, or times you’ve collaborated with others to accomplish something tangible.
Make sure to use American terms throughout. Even if it feels strange to change your job titles, use “attorney” instead of “solicitor,” “realtor” rather than “estate agent.” Write all dates in the American format: month/day/year. Finally, switch your spell-check to “US English” and do a last sweep to be sure you’re describing your skills as “analyzing” data, not “analysing” it and writing “programs” not “programmes.” And of course, you’ll want to proofread multiple times to be sure that your spelling and grammar is perfect.
In some countries a cover letter (or these days, a covering email) is optional, but an American employer won’t even consider an application without a letter – which needs to be individually tailored to every job you apply for. If at all possible, find out the name of the person who will be receiving the letter and address it to them, “Dear Mr./Ms./Mrs. [xxx].” Even if you really can’t find a specific name, don’t lead with “Dear Sir” – female recruiters will not appreciate it. “Dear Hiring Manager” is an acceptable alternative. Like your résumé, your cover letter should be short – no more than one page. It’s the first thing that employers read, which means it’s your best chance to grab the recruiter’s attention: make it clear why you are interested in this particular company, and why they should be interested in you.
Once again, don’t be shy – Americans appreciate self-confidence and will expect you to be proud of your achievements.
Kaplan International English is part of Kaplan Inc., a global education and career services company. With 40 language schools across 6 English-speaking countries, Kaplan helps 50,000 students from 150 countries each year go further with English. Our courses include Business English and preparation for exams such as TOEFL® and GMAT®.
