I suppose I could claim to be one of the most published authors on the site. My work has, over the years, been printed tens of thousands of times.
Unfortunately school worksheets are rarely regarded as worthy of mention in the writers' world.
At the start of my career I had to use a gestetner machine to make my worksheets. This involved 'cutting' a master by typing onto it using a real typewriter. Then the master was put onto a drum and copies were printed off. Next came the Banda. At first the only choice was blue, but over the years the choice increased until my worksheets were multicoloured and a lot more interesting. Nowadays worksheets are produced on a computer and emailed through to the reprographics department. Things certainly have changed over the last thirty years.
During this time I learned many things. I learned never assume that your audience understands what you are talking about. I learned that it is important to cut words down to a minimun because most students are lazy. I learned that spacing is important so the worksheet is not intimidating. But the biggest lesson I learned I learned because I taught a girl who was almost totally deaf.
Beth was in the top set for chemistry. She had a special set of earphones which were radio linked to the microphone around my neck. It took a little while to get used to this, but eventually it didn't bother me anymore. Sometimes if a student was really irritating me I would pop out to the prep room, ask the lab assistant to get out the cattle prod, after he handed me the imaginary prod I would tell him exactly where where I was going to use it on the student. When I returned to the room Beth was often sitting in her place, her shoulders bouncing up and down. It didn't matter how many times I forgot to switch the microphone off, or what I said, none of my words were ever repeated to the other students. I really like her for that. After all this juicy information would have earned her entry into many of the groups that rejected her.
Beth was really intelligent, though her language was limited because of her deafness. All her teachers were required to make special worksheets that contained all the work but written using simple language. Within two weeks of her arrival in my class I noticed that a lot of the students had copies of her worksheets in their exercise books. When I asked them why, they told me that Beth's sheets were better, they were simpler to understand and a lot less frightening.
From then on, after I had written a worksheet I went back through it swapping out the more difficult words and cutting down the length of my sentences. Interestingly enough I saw an overall increase in my students grades.
Even today I try to use the simpler more common words.
I suppose that I need to ask a question to keep this thread going.
What is the most important lesson you have learned for technical, academic or corporate writing?
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