Shanghai Tech Writer

Continuing from an earlier post, English is everybody’s second or third language in China. English is taught in schools as early as kindergarten (in the big cities) but fully integrated into the curriculum by middle school. By high school, the English curriculum is pretty intense as students cram a bunch of textbook English, vocabularies, and grammar into their heads. After high school, all students are subjected to take this rigorous college entrance examination similar to that of the SATs and the ACTs in the U.S. but with intensity to the power of ten. The exam is administered over 3 days and the scores determine whether a student can attend college at all, which school (only one) they got accepted into, and what major (one or two choices) they could pursue. The outcome of this college entrance exam, or “gao kao” determines one’s future. You can read more about gao kao from Wangjianshuo’s blog.

English majors are English majors because they scored high on the English portion of the “gao kao.” Low scores in any subject disqualify students from pursuing their “dream” school or major. It is almost safe to assume that English majors in China have the best English language skills of all the college students in China.

When these English majors graduate from college, these are the pool of candidates from which companies hire people with good English abilities—writers, journalist, reporters, translators, English teachers, and of course, technical writers. Looking at the statistics, that’s like less than 0.1% of the 1.3 billion people in this country. Not exactly a big pool to choose from but it’s probably the best pool to look to hire good technical writers. And yet, like I mentioned in another post, the level of fluency of English majors can’t compare to that of a native English speaker. Most of these graduates have never been to an English-speaking country, and their only exposure to English is in the classroom or from watching pirated DVDs.

In future posts, I’ll continue to write about technical writing and technical communication in China. I’ll be writing about the difficulty of hiring good technical writers, the challenges and obstacles, the profession, and the future of technical writing in China.

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