By Dana P Skopal, PhD
Organisations often have words such as ‘strong communicator’, ‘excellent communication skills’, or ‘writing skills’ in their job descriptions when recruiting. Most jobs involve a combination of verbal and written communication, so can we define the necessary skillsets required when communicating in the workplace? Further, another term of ‘soft skills’ has been used by some professionals to capture a broader set of workplace skills as staff communicate and work in teams.
The basic term here is ‘skills’, but communication skills would invariably encompass certain required knowledge and a range of competencies. The concept of ‘communicative competence’ was introduced by Dell Hymes (1972) to show how tacit knowledge, or innate communicative ability, is used along with grammatical language skills when a writer makes decisions while delivering a message. In practice, staff therefore need more than just writing skills.
Our research on writing in government organisations revealed that for expert – clear and accessible – communication a combination of disciplinary knowledge and several competencies was necessary. Indeed, the skillsets for an expert communicator went beyond subject-matter and grammatical knowledge. The skillsets ranged from writing effectively for the envisaged reader, strategically developing logical arguments, and understanding the workplace organisational systems (see Skopal 2022). This combination of skillsets goes beyond grammatical skills or the principles of plain English.
Even if we can clearly list the required skillsets, another issue is how – or if – are we teaching these at university or in the workplace. In an Australian study, Tim Moore and Janne Morton (2017) stated that university graduates were often viewed as lacking the requisite written communication skills that are expected in the professional workplace. One communication problem area was the structuring of information in documents. In our research, we saw this as a writer understanding a ‘coherent macro-structure’, which means clear ordered headings and paragraphs that a reader can logically follow.
Perhaps educators and managers need to stand back and rethink what should be taught in communication or writing courses – both at university and in the workplace – as communicative expertise requires a blend of competencies (see Skopal 2022 for more detail).
References:
Hymes, D. H. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. B. Pride & J. Holmes (eds) Sociolinguistics: Selected Readings, 269–293. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Moore, T. & Morton, J. (2017). The myth of job readiness? Written communication, employability, and the ‘skills gap’ in higher education. Studies in Higher Education 42 (3):591–609. https://doi:10.1080/03075079.2015.1067602
Skopal, D. P. (2022). Written communicative expertise: The production of public information documents. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Professional Practice, 16(2), 185–206. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1558/jalpp.19105
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