In response to the comment by

Betty Farbman
Teachers College 212-678-4106

to the effect that:  "if you can't write it, you can't do it"

I would have once been tempted to agree, but after serving on an NIH
(National Institutes of Health) study section (grant review board) and
helping people with grant applications for about 20 years since then, I
have certainly come across more than a few bright faculty members who could
tell me quite lucidly about their research -- but what they committed to
paper did not at all "tell the story" -- and in one case, was totally
unintelligeable!

I think we need to understand that some of the young professional people
were never taught to do expository writing.  In addition, some of them do
not know how to follow a set of instructions -- especially when those
instructions are written by people who were not trained in expository
writing!

Times are changing:  One well-dressed young man (age about 35) in one of my
workshops had no idea what a noun is or what a verb is.  I jokingly asked
him how his spelling was and he quite seriously replied, "Oh, I can't spell
at all, but it doesn't matter because I have a spell checker."

 Slightly off the subject, but rather instructive:  a professor I know,
recently hired a very young secretary.  When, at one point, he asked her to
type something on a typewriter, she wanted to know where the screen was!

The bottom line is:  there are some very bright young people out there with
very good ideas -- but some of them do not know how to communicate -- even
verbally -- and a larger number don't have the skills to put their thoughts
on paper in a way that others can understand.

LRL

Liane Reif-Lehrer, PhD
PO Box 645
Belmont, MA  02178
Tel: 781-863-1117;  Fax:  781-674-0436