At 08:02 AM 7/12/2009, Siddhesh Poyarekar wrote:
What is funny is that we Indians are not the only ones with English as a non-native language. But we seem to be the only ones to cite that as *the* reason for any failure. The issue is not language, it is attitude.
One thing that we should remember is that not everyone has had the advantages (of education in certain types of colleges or schools), that we have had. So, in order to really appreciate the problem, we need to look beyond the familiar. I occasionally come in touch with people from rural background who are good programmers, but not so good at communication. And they have a performance problem because of that.
About the rest of your email.. you seem to agree with me, but have taken several hundred words to do so :P
Anyway, I feel that even in a Mentor-Mentee setup there are certain ingredients to success. The Mentor should have access to online tutorials, articles etc. which are geared to explaining the need for good communication and the steps for improving at that. Just creating a Mentor-Mentee setup will not solve the problem.
I am hunting for such tutorials, or will write one if needed.
On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 8:19 AM, Prashant Vermapverma@gmail.com wrote:
One thing that we should remember is that not everyone has had the advantages (of education in certain types of colleges or schools), that we have had. So, in order to really appreciate the problem, we need to look beyond the familiar. I occasionally come in touch with people from rural background who are good programmers, but not so good at communication. And they have a performance problem because of that.
My mother comes from a vernacular medium. She speaks well enough to sell ideas to managers of multinational companies (read grammar/english nazis. Yes, it's a different point of contention altogether). She got to that stage only because she wanted to. There are many others I know who have done just that -- worked hard at their language skills because they want to distribute their ideas. On the flip side I have come across many people who do not have the communication skills to match their code but will not work on that because they are unwilling to recognize it as a problem. more often than not their are satisfied with just fixing the problem, not communicating how they did it. That way they become indispensable.
About the rest of your email.. you seem to agree with me, but have taken several hundred words to do so :P
My primary point of disagreement is on whether there should be any hand holding. I believe there should not be. That and the fact that the entire communications barrier scene and our concept of learning and achievements is a cultural problem and not just an individual one. I agree with your light bulb joke ;)
Anyway, I feel that even in a Mentor-Mentee setup there are certain ingredients to success. The Mentor should have access to online tutorials, articles etc. which are geared to explaining the need for good communication and the steps for improving at that. Just creating a Mentor-Mentee setup will not solve the problem.
I am hunting for such tutorials, or will write one if needed.
The tutorial will probably end in two or three lines to the effect of:
"Learn to read and write in English or else no one will care about what you are doing."
That seems to summarize your goal quite well. Maybe put in links for some english speaking courses (with a commercial tag? ;) ). You cannot really tell someone *how* to read posts of better English speakers and try and pick up their writing style -- that (if effective at all) is spoon feeding and is plain silly in the context of FOSS.
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Prashant Verma -
Siddhesh Poyarekar