Question:
My boss and I need to fill a vacant position in our department.
Excellent writing and editing skills are needed of the candidate who
will get the job. As a test of these skills, we want to give
interviewees a couple of mediocre essays or other writing samples to
edit and improve. There is plenty of bad writing everywhere, but we
need samples that lack finesse and just need a little polishing--not
stuff with blatant errors that is laughably bad. Can anyone recommend a
source (preferably online) that might have what we need?
Answer:
I'm sorry you didn't get any direct answers to your question, because I
think it is intriguing. There are people here who have hired all sorts
of staff and must have stories to tell about how to identify people with
the best English skills.
But if those people telling the stories are supremely confident in their
own ability to identify good writers and editors, that doesn't exactly
apply to your situation. If I understand you, you more in the position
of wanting to hire somebody who is more expert than you are -- how do we
ever do that? Plus, this expert might be going over you and your boss's
work?
I don't know how you could get ahold of a simple diagnostic test (with
answers) but I think you should be able to pull something together, by
looking in books aimed at teaching grammar and verbal skills. I'm
thinking of texts, SAT examination prep books, and popular
for-the-layman books.
For example, _Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the English
Language *but were afraid to ask_ was printed in the 1970s as a popular
guide to improving one's English. Besides explanations, it has exercises
and answers, and you could string together half a dozen of these
questions into a little "pop quiz" to give applicants. If the quiz
covered spelling, punctuation, and a few of the basic word order
questions (like parallel structure) that should be enough to identify
who is good at spotting those errors and who is poor.
The book is out of print, and I don't see any copies at Abebooks.com,
but I could copy out a few exercises if this seriously appeals to you.
By the way, simply asking people what scores they got on the verbal
section of the SAT, or the Advanced Placement English exam, or similar,
should give you some meaningful numbers. Someone who got a 700 on the
verbal SAT has simply got to be better at the technical aspects than
someone who got a 500.
There are other aspects besides sheerly technical, of course -- consider
a brusque jerk who issues nasty corrections vs. someone who makes polite
suggestions backed up by reasons...
PS -- the line "Thank you in advance" drives some people around here
wild. They think it is an insincere, meaningless formula. I find it
harmless, myself, but I'd still advise you to say almost anything else
but those four words.
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