What do you think determines a person’s literacy? What does it mean to be able to write correctly? Well-written text is clear.

A very recent case from my practice - today I conducted an interview for the position of “Certification Manager”, and, as usual, I asked to fill out two questionnaires (of an informational nature, and with questions about knowledge in the field of sales). The applicant, a sweet girl of 24 years old, boasted that she graduated with 5 marks from the institute, Faculty of Economics. Well, great! — I thought, since the first part of the interview went well. The whole impression was blurred by these ill-fated profiles...

By the way, I always use them to see how a person writes. Business correspondence between a manager and a client reflects the face of the company, agree. What do you think, "with him" we write together "arrange a meeting And« we write with a mistake at the end of the word, "I don't need support And» - same error!!! She doesn't know how write correctly! Of course, now this girl will definitely have less chance of getting a similar job in other companies.

What does it mean to be able to write correctly?

There were times, 1-2 centuries ago, when people were illiterate. They were faced with completely different tasks that had nothing to do with literacy. So, among them there were “Literates”, these are people who were taught to read and write and knew how to read and write. It was to them that all the illiterate people went to write down their last name instead of a plus sign, draw up some document, read a letter. Over time, more and more people became literate, and those who could only read were considered semi-literate.

Of course, even today it will be difficult to find a person who cannot read and write. But you can assess the degree of literacy of a person by how well he has the skills to read and write in his native language. In fact, literacy can be considered knowledge of exceptions to the rules. And the sooner we start studying the rules in order to learn about all the exceptions, the more correctly we will write later.

Today, in the 21st century, to be literate means to be an educated person. Currently, it is believed that literacy is the foundation on which all personal development is built.

Why do you need to be able to write correctly?

Everyone can answer this question differently. I believe that the ability to write correctly is necessary in order to understand each other correctly, and not in two ways. Rules and laws exist for this reason, so that people live and create in accordance with them. In my opinion, this is reason number 1.

Reason No. 2. In order to respect and preserve the laws, traditions and culture of the Russian language and its people.

Reason #3: Literacy is a powerful tool, and on the other hand, it is a powerful tool with which to control. Would you like to have such a tool in your arsenal? Become literate.

Reason No. 4. As seventh graders wrote in an essay on the topic “Why you need to be able to write correctly” - in order to be hired for a good job. It’s gratifying that the children already understand a lot.

Reason No. 5. There is a good opinion that the first impression of a person is formed by what kind of shoes he is wearing. Clean, well-groomed, or dirty and unwashed - feel the difference yourself. Which shoes will you be more comfortable wearing? The same is true with literacy. As soon as you see that a person writes incorrectly (I don’t mean OBSERVATIONS, I mean patterns ), so the attitude towards him immediately changes. From plus to minus.

Of course, you need to take care of your education. For some this may be a difficult task, I have no doubt. But even slow movement is always better than any stagnation. And if you train and work on yourself, the result will definitely appear. (Question for backfill: is the word “appear” spelled correctly in this case? The soft sign in verbs is an eternal Russian problem).

How to learn to write correctly?

Do you think I will open America to you? You already know all this. So what needs to be done in my opinion:

Take notes. A great skill to learn over time. The main thing is to learn to take notes without errors, often checking with the original.

Rewrite. Many copywriting masters advise, no, even strongly recommend and force their students to rewrite texts. In order to learn how to write sales letters, you need to take texts from famous masters of their craft and rewrite them thousands of times. By the way, this is very correct advice. This skill will polish your knowledge of the rules for writing words and sentences, and teach you how to write correctly.

Learn to type. I took Shahidzhanyan’s “Word on the Keyboard” course, and somewhere after the 20th lesson I no longer wanted to make mistakes - I had to retype very long texts again. Read about it in my article.

In my opinion, self-education is a feasible task for any person. After all, all these actions must be performed by us from school. But the main thing is that you cannot stop there under any circumstances. After school, deep knowledge and study of our native language just begins: each of us has our own professional field of activity, in which we must be able to communicate competently in a professional language. But they don’t teach us this at school.

Unfortunately, our people, especially the younger generation, are generally illiterate. And you know, this is very beneficial for those in power - illiterate people are easier to govern! It’s an axiom: if you don’t know how to write correctly, it means you don’t know a lot. And since you don’t know much, it won’t be difficult to fool you.

The conclusion suggests itself. We must learn to manage ourselves and our own lives. And take personal responsibility for it. If we want to be literate, educated people, then the ability write correctly and speaking should be an obligatory quality. Our success directly depends on this.

P.S. I'll go check my article for accuracy. Otherwise it will turn out that the author is still a “literate” person, full of mistakes, but writes about what she herself does not know how to do. But I passionately wish for myself and others that it is easy to write any text correctly and without errors!

I suggest taking a literacy lesson “without leaving the cash register.” Watch the Hit Parade of total mistakes!

I know that many of us now need not only the ability to write texts correctly, but also other effective skills. For example, the most effective human skill of the 21st century - a “superbrain” that will allow you to receive more money, love and emotions - can be obtained in Alexandra Rudamanova’s course “Reflashing”. Read the detailed course description

Probably everyone who had to write compositions, summaries, abstracts and essays at school has tried to become a writer. But are you now ready to try to write an interesting article, a long letter with a business proposal, not to mention an entire book? If you have come to this page, then you would probably like to improve your writing skills: the ability to easily create competent, beautiful texts.

Most people find it difficult to write even small text. These difficulties can be of different nature. For example, one person lacks the banal desire and willpower to just sit down and start writing something. Another would like to, but it’s difficult to decide on a topic or find the right words. The third one can write a lot, but then notices that there are a large number of errors in his text.

All these problems are associated not so much with our innate abilities, but with the knowledge and skills that our parents, teachers and lecturers instilled in us. Unfortunately, schools and universities rarely offer subjects or lessons that even to some extent teach how to learn to write correctly.

This course of online lessons contains useful tips to help beginning writers. In this training, you will learn what the art of writing is, or as it is now fashionably called, copywriting, and you will be able to master basic writing skills. This course is focused primarily on practical knowledge that will help you show your talent and your creativity.

What is this writing skill?

(writing, writing, copywriting, literary activity) is the human activity of creating verbal works intended for reading by other people.

All people who can write with a pen or type on a computer have writing abilities to varying degrees. Naturally, each person develops these abilities to varying degrees. But still, not everyone is a writer. A real writer is a person who can write a good text that is interesting to readers.

If a person simply writes uninteresting and meaningless texts to anyone, this type of writing is called graphomania , and the authors themselves graphomaniacs. Today you can meet many graphomaniacs on the Internet. This is due to the fact that people are trying to create texts that are aimed not at readers, but at search engine algorithms. In addition, the process of popularizing graphomania is provoked by the readers (users) themselves. Remember when you read an article from cover to cover. Most likely, in most cases you simply view (scan) texts on website pages “diagonally”, trying to quickly find the information you need. And if there is no demand for good texts, then there is no supply of them.

In our course we will talk about a different type of writing, the fruits of which are interesting and useful to readers.

Applying the Writing Skill

The ability to write beautifully, logically and competently is a skill useful to almost every modern person. Every day we write letters, communicate with colleagues and friends through mail and social networks. In our messages, we express thoughts, address the addressee with a request, or describe some events. In this case, competent written speech can serve as an excellent assistant in career growth and business relationships.

And even if you don't plan to become famous through your works, writing can be useful to you personally. For example, you can keep a diary and reflect your interesting thoughts in it; this will help you put things in order in your head, structure important ideas, plans and upcoming tasks.

How to learn to write?

Writing skill is complex skill consisting of various knowledge and skills. Firstly, in order to become a real writer, it is important to be a sufficiently educated and versatile person. At a minimum, you need to be clear about what you want to tell your readers and why it will be important and useful to them. Secondly, you cannot do without motivation and a strong desire to create a new work, because writing requires a lot of effort and time. Are you ready for this? Thirdly, you must know the norms of language, or in other words, the rules of writing, which will allow you to convey your ideas to readers as clearly as possible.

Some of the most essential attributes that will help you become a good writer include the following:

1. Well-read and educated, good upbringing.
2. Motivation, a strong desire to write, hard work and perseverance.
3. Extensive active vocabulary.
4. Literacy, knowledge of the rules of the Russian language.
5. Harmoniously developed logical and creative types of thinking.
6. Knowledge of genre, style and structural features of written speech.

In addition, writers often say that a work is helped to come into being by something elusive, related to morality, life ideals, creative inspiration, or perhaps a divine gift.

For example, Richard Bach claims that his most famous story, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, was literally “dictated from above” to him. And those who have also read Bach's other works will have noticed the stark contrast between his traditional stories and the deeply metaphorical Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

In this regard, the question arises:

Is it even possible to learn the art of writing?

How to take classes

In our training lessons you will find background information, as well as useful tips and exercises for mastering all the important writing skills that you can learn. The speed and efficiency of development of each of the skills presented varies from person to person. Therefore, it is impossible to say exactly how long each lesson or the entire course will take you.

1. To make sure you don't miss anything, try to read all the lessons.
2. Try to identify your main problems and solve them, understanding them in more detail in the relevant lessons, doing exercises, following the necessary recommendations.
3. Practice is an important element of each lesson, so be sure to try to apply the knowledge gained in your writing activities.
4. Test your work with experienced, objective readers who won't be shy about saying what they really think about the fruits of your creativity.
5. Try to write constantly and don’t give up on it, otherwise both the muse and a good style will come to you as rarely and irregularly as you do to them.

Books and textbooks

The art of writing is not something that can be learned once and for all. The ability to write texts must be constantly improved, otherwise it will fade away. A writer needs to constantly maintain his form: read a lot, write, and also study specialized literature about writing. On this page we have listed a number of popular books and textbooks about authorship and literary skills.

• Stephen King "How to Write Books"
• Yuri Nikitin “How to become a writer”
• Umberto Eco “How to Write a Thesis”, as well as a number of other works
• Dietmar Rosenthal “Collection of exercises in the Russian language”

Quotes from writers about authorship

To help you find creative inspiration, we have collected quotes from successful famous literary (and other) figures, containing tips for combating various problems of writing:

Write freely and as quickly as you can to get everything out on paper. Never edit or rewrite until you are done. Rewriting as you go is usually nothing more than an excuse not to move forward. It also interferes with the free flow of thought and rhythm that only comes from unconsciously working with the material.

Our enemies can be more useful to us than our friends, for friends often forgive us our weaknesses, while enemies usually note them and draw our attention to them. Do not disregard the judgment of your enemies.

You need to write poetry every day, just as a violinist or pianist must play his instrument for several hours every day without skipping. Otherwise, your talent will inevitably become scarce and dry up, like a well from which no water is drawn for a long time.

A true writer is like an ancient prophet: he sees more clearly than ordinary people.

People who know how to think also know how to write. And those who suffer from a low level of intelligence write the same memoirs, letters and speeches. The ability to write well is not a natural gift. This can be learned. Write the same way you speak: naturally... Try to express your thoughts simply, without pretensions to excessive intellectuality... If you are working on something very important, then ask your friends or colleagues to express their opinions about your work.

Literacy and perfect spelling are of great importance in modern society, no matter how you try to prove otherwise, and there are many reasons for this.

Agree that nowadays people no longer pay much attention to the correct spelling of words, especially when communicating online. The influence of short and quick communications in the form of text messages still brings its negative results, although literacy is not only a matter of following the good old rules of spelling, it is also a matter of image, and education, and the banal ability to convey one’s written thought clearly and correctly.

What are the good reasons why literacy is still important?

1. Good impression of the person

When you write perfectly correctly, you leave only a positive impression about yourself, which is unlikely to be guaranteed if you make a lot of spelling errors. All your written documents, be it official papers, academic papers, personal or work letters, must be impeccable. Keep this in mind!

2. Literacy makes communication easier

Another benefit of literacy is that it greatly contributes to more effective communication. After all, reading and understanding well-written texts is much easier than straining over written opuses that are replete with errors.

3. Literacy affects your prospects and career.

If you think that proper spelling isn't that important, think again! For example, even the slightest hint of poor literacy can seriously impact your future job prospects. Let's say an employer has two candidates for a good position. The first applicant's resume is full of errors, but the second applicant's resume is flawless. Even if these two applicants have the same skill levels, the employer will certainly choose the second one.

4. Literacy helps avoid confusion and ambiguity.

Literacy can help avoid any confusion and especially ambiguity in understanding. You yourself probably know how difficult it is to wade through the jungle of text written with errors. Just imagine what serious consequences a lack of literacy, for example, among doctors, journalists or politicians, can have!

5. Compliance with standards

Spelling is the basis or foundation of a language. If you care about how you will be understood and perceived, then you should maintain all established standards of language, which, in fact, is the main tool of your communication.

6. Don't rely on spell checkers

Never rely on spell checkers, typo checkers, or error detection programs. These programs have a fairly limited vocabulary, so many new words are marked as incorrect because they are not stored in their memory. In addition, automatic spell checking will not recognize an error if the misspelled word sounds quite correct in another context. For example, an error in the sentence “we are going home” (instead of “we are going home”) will not be detected by the program.

7. Well-written text is clear

Will it be easy to understand a text if it is full of errors? Comprehension is quite important in many situations because we must be able to read and comprehend what is written. Let's say you are reading the instructions for any technical device: this means that they must be understood, interpreted and carried out correctly.

8. Illiteracy distracts and dissipates attention

An illiterately written text scatters and distracts the reader’s attention. Try to carefully read such a sample with a bunch of errors yourself, and you will understand how annoying it is. Therefore, express your thoughts in writing correctly, and be sure to watch how you present them.

6 Replies

By the way, in elementary school they don’t explain WHY the word “night” is given a soft sign. There is no hard “ch” sound in the Russian language, unlike, say, Serbian, so the question is quite natural.

Going straight to the topic (alimentary things.) it is written - elementary! And I believe that whoever reads a lot writes without mistakes!
And here’s another thing: in the army, one soldier wrote me an explanatory note with swear words! He just doesn’t know that such words cannot be written on paper! Probably everyone is to blame, both the school and the parents.

We need to train our visual memory. If a person reads a lot (of course, good literature), he automatically remembers the correct spelling of words, their correct use, beautiful language turns, and a wealth of expressions. Well, in general - he acquires a sense of language, gets used to cultural speech.

I think it’s all together here, everyone has their own way, but in general there are a number of factors at work: and the teachers and the school, who don’t really need it (for example, in my class they insisted that the children study, because this is a lyceum , and the school needed good results; as a result, even those who were the worst students in the class and barely got a B in the Unified State Exam, at least write “NOT” with verbs separately); and parents who do not care about the students, and they think that the school will teach, this also includes, on the contrary, the excessive “love” of parents, when teachers scold, give two marks, and parents are only indignant, “how dare you give my son a two! he’s already overworked with homework every day,” and the children, of course, don’t want to study. Although I would blame the children last, because when did children want to study? Nobody wants. And we didn’t want to, but they didn’t leave us a choice, we had to study, that’s all.

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First, a real-life story. Our publishing house searched for a long time and unsuccessfully for a good literary editor. When talking with applicants, I asked the usual questions: where did you study, what did you graduate from, do you have any work experience, what texts do you prefer to work with, what do you know, etc. One of the many applicants (in the end they took him) answered all my questions the same way: “I can read and write!” With some irritation, I noticed that we can all do this, but the answer was: “I I can read and write if you understand what it means.”

If you understand...

Possession of the skills and abilities of reading and writing is called literacy. The modern dictionary of synonyms includes this word in the following synonymous series: literacy, awareness, competence, knowledge (of), familiarity (with). And, accordingly, synonyms for the word literate are the words knowledgeable, knowledgeable, competent, knowledgeable, heard (about), strong (colloquial). A logical question arises: if literacy is already the ability to read and write, competence, awareness, then What exactly adds to this concept the word “functional”? What is meant by functional literacy and why is so much written and talked about?

Let us refer to the definition of Doctor of Psychological and Pedagogical Sciences, Academician Aleksey Alekseevich Leontiev (in the article “Common Sense Pedagogy”, 1999) Functional literacy, according to A. A. Leontiev, is a human ability Fluently use reading and writing skills to obtain information from text, that is, for its understanding, compression, transformation, etc. (reading) and for transmission of such information in real communication(letter). From this point of view, a person who, for example, sees in a text only what is explicitly stated, does not know how to highlight the main thing in what he read, concisely state the content of the text, or draw up a simple diagram, plan or table, cannot be considered literate.

It is unlikely that anyone needs to be convinced of how important the skills of reading and working with information are today: without them, it is impossible not only to successfully master school and university programs, get a decent job and move up the career ladder, but also to simply be a competent user of the Internet, communicate adequately with others.

What is it like minimum set of skills reading and working with information, ensuring functional literacy? There are not many of them, but each of these skills is extremely important, and all skills are closely interrelated. By answering each question from those proposed below, you will be able to delve deeper into the content of the concept, and by counting the number of “yes” and “no” answers, you can approximately determine the level of your functional literacy.

1. Do you pay attention to How you are reading?
2. Did you know that any text contains, as a rule, three levels of information: factual(what is said explicitly in the text, directly), subtextual(what is not directly said, but can be read “between the lines”) and conceptual(this is the main idea of ​​the text, its main meanings, which the reader formulates independently)? We can talk about a complete understanding of the text only if the reader masters (reads) all three levels of text information.
3. Can you read all three levels of text information?
4. Did you know that all texts cannot be read in exactly the same way, that there are different reading techniques depending on what text you are reading and for what purpose?
5. Did you know that there are different types of reading, for example, viewing, introductory, studying, reflective- and each type of reading has its own techniques?
6. Do you know the techniques of different types of reading?
7. Do you know how to change reading strategy and tactics depending on the purpose of reading and the type of text?
8. Do you know how to predict the further content of the text and test yourself before you start reading and as you read?
9. Do you see hidden author's questions in the text? If so, do you try to predict the answers to them and then check yourself as you read - that is, conduct a so-called “dialogue with the author”?
10. Can you convey the content of the text concisely orally and in writing? What about selectively?
11. Do you know how to find keywords in a text and, conversely, determine the topic and main content of the text based on a group of keywords?
12. Do you know how to present text information in a different form (for example, create a plan, table, diagram, abstract, summary, simple graph or diagram based on the text you read)? Or vice versa: compose a coherent text based on a table, diagram, plan, abstract?