Following on from our post Assessing writing skills – a response to “What Does It Mean to Know How to Write?”, we’ve created an experimental test page on our Web site that can help you assess your technical writing skills. The idea is you can compare your skills profile with that of a typical Technical Author:
Assess your technical writing skills – beta
It’s a proof of concept, just for fun etc, but we welcome any feedback on it.
We’re currently working on developing some new tests to assist clients who need to assess the writing skills of candidate Technical Authors. Writing test papers is a challenging task – it goes against the grain to make mistakes deliberately!
English is a language where sentences can be written in many different ways. Today, many people would find “to boldly go” to be acceptable, as well as the more traditional “to go boldly”. I was taught to use Oxford commas (but not in lists), whereas many of my colleagues prefer the grammar rules taught to TEFL tutors. It means, often, there can be more than one answer that’s acceptable. The ultimate goal to communicate information to users in an understandable way.
We believe it’s best to create a series of tests. Our tests comprise a proofreading test, an editing test and an exercise requiring the candidate to write some instructions.
What approach do you take?
Free writing test for you to use when you’re interviewing.
We offer a free writing test you can use to help you assess candidates. Contact us if you’d like a copy. Note: For prospective employers only – sorry, not available to candidates.