In Canada, and I suspect in the US, employers place great importance on
communication skills, as an attribute for employees. This refers to both
written and oral communication. There are regular complaints from employers
about the communication ability of recent graduates from our universities.

>From my own experience with recent graduates, I can say that these

communication skills are quite weak, surprisingly weak.This is true for
native speakers, and even more so the case with students who spent a long
time in ESL programs.

The question may not be so much how well these respondents think they read.
It may be more a matter of what they read, and how much they have been
exposed to the kind of reading content that would enable them to acquire a
rich vocabulary, and expose them to different ideas and literary
experiences. These are usually prerequisites for good communication skills.

I firmly believe that the easiest measure of one's ability to communicate in
a language is the size of one's vocabulary, and I mean passive vocabulary.
This is quite easily measured in a close test and has the great advantage of
simplicity.Many other attempts to describe levels of literacy and language
proficiency just strike me as too obtuse and subjective.

Steve




-- 
Steve Kaufmann
www.lingq.com
1-604-922-8514
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