garfield16:


His English is not that of someone with a 4.0 GPA. If it were any other field I would understand but not Mass Com. How do you get a 4.o GPa in Mass com with poor English and sentence composition? These are the people that will end up as journalists and start printing misleading news all because they didnt get their English right. Did you notice how he said he "demanded" to see the GM, that should have been "insisted" or "requested" also twice at least he said salaries instead of salary.

Na over sabi dey worry u. Here is an example from the dictionary "I demand to see the manager" (OALD 7th edition), and the plural of salary is salaries and it was correctly used. You really need to go back to school or at least learn to use the dictionary. There are soft copies that go for F.O.C nowadays you know.

Oga is english our mother tongue or a borrowed language??even most asian,european and african countries which communicate in english,havnt still got the best english accent..Even after their foreign educations and background..please learn to appreciate people and not always wanting to critisize at every point..People like u are some of the problems we have in naija.U don't appreciate good things rather u want to cause trouble at every point..

garfield16:


His English is not that of someone with a 4.0 GPA. If it were any other field I would understand but not Mass Com. How do you get a 4.o GPa in Mass com with poor English and sentence composition? These are the people that will end up as journalists and start printing misleading news all because they didnt get their English right. Did you notice how he said he "demanded" to see the GM, that should have been "insisted" or "requested" also twice at least he said salaries instead of salary.

bjbukzy:
u nailed it but we live in a stereotypical country! some people will soon tell u dat u voted buhari!some will take ur attack against legislative personal...some wont see d point cos u r from d north....
dis our issue of not looking at the individual but where he is coming from is our number 1 source of sadness (abi why person go just siddon hate the whole north cos dy voted buhari and anoda pesin go decide hate d whole igbo tribe cos of nzeogwu crime?)

I wonder

francis247:
Na over sabi dey worry u. Here is an example from the dictionary "I demand to see the manager" (OALD 7th edition), and the plural of salary is salaries and it was correctly used. You really need to go back to school or at least learn to use the dictionary. There are soft copies that go for F.O.C nowadays you know.

don't be silly, are these examples of proper English? ....especiallly from a graduate, and a professional journalist?



"a lawmaker takes 38,000 US Dollars as his annual salaries"

"his Danish counterpart has to work for more than 57 years to earn that salaries"


The more you people try to defend this guy, the more it just proves my point that most of you guys are poorly educated and what a wasted generation awaits the future of this nation. The sad thing about education is that you are only as good as what you have been taught but if you have been taught wrong then you cannot function correctly. English is the universal language of communication, here we have a graduate of mass Comm whose English is poor, the result is that in the course of his professional duties, he is going to misinform because he doesn't know when to use the right words. How does someone whose profession is communication not understand the language , his very tool of communication?


Salaries is multiple, salary is singular, when you are talking about annual your are referring to the singular and so the correct term is salary. If he said "the total of his monthly salaries in a year is 36000" then he can use "salaries" because he is referring to the aggregation of multiple monthly salaries. Many of you are educated illiterates and that's the reason why a lot of you graduates can't get jobs. Your certificates are not worth the paper they are printed on.


The Irony which is lost on all of you is that here is a fresh graduate writing an article bemoaning the difficulties in getting a job but unwittingly showing why graduates find it difficult getting quality jobs....because they aren't good quality graduates.

fexyrich:
Oga is english our mother tongue or a borrowed language??even most asian,european and african countries which communicate in english,havnt still got the best english accent..Even after their foreign educations and background..please learn to appreciate people and not always wanting to critisize at every point..People like u are some of the problems we have in naija.U don't appreciate good things rather u want to cause trouble at every point..

maybe he should have written the article in Hausa, English is our official language, it's the official language of a person who studied mass Comm and aspires to be a journalist, stop trying to defend to indefensible!!! He is not a engineer, an Architect or some other professional. where your grasp and use of English language is not the essence of your profession.


The sad thing about Nigeria is that you do not see that it is an embarrassment for you to call yourself a graduate of mass comm and not be versed in the use of proper English!!! You do not understand that this is like a driver telling you he can't see well or a mechanic that has no tools ....and you wonder why you can't get a job?


If you are not well versed in English, the universal language of communication, then you have no business in Mass Comm or as a journalist.


This is not about not appreciating good things, this is about knowing what is not good, not up to the required standard. it is because I know how a good journalist writes that I know that this guy has a lot of work to do if he is to become anything other than a mediocre reporter and his foundations are wrong because his English is poor. Like I have said we have very low standards in Nigeria, we accept anything. Let's forget about his English for a second and talk about his journalism. What exactly have you read in that article that you didn't know already? What is the purpose of news if it's something you already know? A good journalist will provoke thought in his articles by providing a new insight into a problem, not just restate a problem we all know exists. But in country like Nigeria, I guess this is the standard so you wouldn't know otherwise. This is not about accent, how do you tell accent from the written word? The beauty of the written word is that it is devoid of regional accents, so if your written English is poor it's not because you are Hausa, Ibo Yoruba, Chinese, Ghanaian or French, it's because your English is poor, simple as!!!


This is how I grade the author

Language/presentation 4
Professionalism 0 (a journalist that does not proof read his work and sends it out to be published)
Content 5 (not really thought provoking, no new perspective, just regurgitating what we already know)

iliyande:


Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/03/nigerias-first-minister-sadness/



www.nairaland.com/attachments/3508039_cd0830aweaeza5_jpeg7838d3cb56c7aff35eca9dba6e59bd4a Haruna trekking from Kano to Abuja to protest ‘Taraba guber election rigging’ in April 2015. Photo credit: AS Aruwa

This is what happens when you have placed your future and destiny in the hands of the looters. They loot everything lootables...

My friend please create a job for yourself and make something meaningful out of your meaningless situation.

Nigeria will experience her TOTAL FREEDOM the day she realises that the only enemy to deal with is her so called HEARTLESS and INSENSITIVE LEADERS, then like Ghana, our journey will take decisive destination of hope for the futire and no more wandering about in the wilderness of lack in the midst of abundance.

peacengine:
This same country was the happiest only a few years back despite not having everything, but some saddists in the opposition were not happy that people were happy, and decided to use propaganda to destroy our joy. Now people are so sad and the man with the peculiar body odor said it is a blessing to face hardship.

What an IRONY..

garfield16:


There is no big picture, you and him are products of a failed education system which is why you dont see a problem with his English


again a student of mass com writes an srticles, not engineerring, not economics, Mass Comm and here are the grammertical flaws in his article

"published on several news outfits" should be published in

ranked Denmark the “ Happiest Nation, Burundi, the least happy” and Nigeria 103rd least happiest in the .....poor use of semi-colon


The survey ranked countries based on their abilities to provide basic necessities of life for their citizens thereby making them happy .The report published on several news outfits ranked Denmark the “ Happiest Nation, Burundi, the least happy” and Nigeria 103rd least happiest in the World. But to start with the first one, as usually the case with many students who graduated and are awaiting mobilization for National Youth Service, I started browsing the street of some major towns and cities in search of a temporary job to earn a living and avoid being dependent. [b]Nigerian youthsNigerian youth [/b]I visited several secondary schools in Kano to see if I could be appointed a classroom teacher, of all the schools I visited, the school principal pulls out dossiers of applicants waiting to be called for an interview.


This is the 1st paragraph of a published article by someone supposed to be the second best graduating mass comm student? I stopped highlighting the errors because there are so many The whole article is a grammatical mess, God help us!!!!


syntax errors, grammatical errors. Now someone at Vanguard published this article because as the second best graduating student one would assume you don't need supervision but alas!

Then I think the problem lies with whomever published the article in the first place. I publish third party articles on the platform I work with too, and I still have to proofread them to make sure they are free of errors though I'm not the editor.

I think someone from Vanguard failed in their responsibility.

However, this does not distract from the message in the article nor should it stop him from getting a job. After all, if he gets a job as a journalist today, his stories would still be edited - best graduating student or not.

I think I am becoming uncomfortable with some of the people condemning Garfield16.

He has a valid point. My problem with him which he failed to address is why he ignored the main rock of the article.

Unfortunately, his valid points have overshadowed the main point. I will like to read his take on this.

b

Garfield 16,

Believe me I share your frustrations and my cohorts discuss this everytime we meet.

This is exactly what the writer and his cohorts discuss all the time.

Their views and pains are as frustrating as our views. But please accept that neither is new. Regressive policies, greed and monkey see monkey do are mainly our fault.

This country gave us the best education and jobs anyone could hope for. They recruited us at home and abroad, gave us places to live and cars with drivers.

How did we pay back? Messed up the country by looting it blind and hide under ethic thugs. You and I can say we never stole a kobo in our lives, but it is a collective guilt. Honest ones among us never made a chorus to fight looters and when we did, we were soundly defeated.

Out of that frustration, we cannot blame the writer as you rightly indicated. But we cannot say their frustrations are not new. Both their frustrations and ours must be expressed at every opportunity in English, broken English, Igbo, Hausa and Yoruba.

This generation are too much in a hurry to get rich. In my days, I do not know about yours, Sisi come drive in my Volkswagen was a big pride. Now they want Mercedes as their first car. Monkey see monkey do.

I love your example of a tiler, I need not add more. It is the main problem of this generation. They do not do assignments in schools or trades well enough, always in a hurry.

Community have to come together and participate. How?

During Jakande reign, many rich and middle-class hated his schools. Some of us in different areas heeded his call. We participated in schools around our homes and these school were better than glorified private schools. The irony was, we spent less of our money than others spent in private schools.

It is not the fault of the writer, we have failed them and they will continue to cry out loud.

garfield16:

Actually, people have been so focused on my criticisms that they failed to see I have addressed the issue several times.
In a nutshell, the reason why graduates struggle to find work on graduation is that the educational system in the country has collapsed and so we are producing graduates that are not fit for purpose. Ironically by writing an article about his ordeal in pursuit of a job as a graduate of Mass Comm, the author has unwittingly highlighted the problem with the Nigerian graduate jobseeker.
1. poorly educated
When a student passes through primary school, secondary school and then gains admission to a tertiary institution to study Mass communication and then puts out an article with so many grammatical errors, it is safe to say he is poorly educated. It's not his fault, the system has failed him as it has many other graduates. Even more worrisome is that this is the 2nd best graduating student of that institution, it just shows we are sending out quacks into the job market. Furthermore it tells me as an employer of labour to blacklist anyone from that institution because if this is the best you have to offer, how bad is the guy with a 2nd class? There is not a single paragraph in that write-up without not just one but multiple grammatical errors and I am not an English expert, I only got C5 in English in my time. I though of highlighting all the errors but there are just too many. The language of Mass Communication is English, how do you graduate students in Mass Comm that can't write an article without multiple grammatical, composition and syntax errors? I need to point out here that this is not the fault of the graduate, he is but a product of a failed system, garbage in, garbage out. As a student you are only as good as what you are taught...I can't over emphasize this. As I mentioned earlier, I am an employ graduates and it is so frustrating working with Nigerian graduates that I no longer bother except for menial administrative jobs (which they even fail at executing without supervision) and this is the experience of many employers who demand quality in their organizations. I know of a consulting Engineering firm that is so fed up with the substandard quality of Nigerian graduates that he now employs foreigners from India, Maylasia and South Africa (including Nigerians based abroad) on an ad-hoc basis and they correspond and work via the internet. I can also tell you that when I advertise for a position, I'm looking through the pile of applicants for the guy who has studied or worked abroad, I never bother with the Nigerian graduates. I got my 1st degree in Nigeria and did my masters abroad and the 1st thing I noticed at the time, was how much easier it was getting a degree abroad...but that was then! Now the Nigerian degree is not worth the paper it is printed on. it's sad for graduates to hear but it's the reality. So if I want to employ a graduate, I look for someone who has been through a system where there are still standards. I will take a 2:2 from a second tier University like the University of Westminster than a 1st class from the best University in Nigeria today, talk less of the lesser Universities in Nigeria. Mind you a transcript from U.I, Unilag, ABU, Ife back in the day would get you admission to Havard or Cambridge, that is how highly rated our Universities used to be wheres a transcript from University of Westminster will not, but now the best University in Nigeria does not even compare to a University like Westminster. I mentioned this before, the reason why tuition fees is a big issue with CBN is precisely because sending your child to a University in Nigeria is akin to dooming his/her future. The majority of those who attend a Nigerian University are presently wasting their time or at the very best you are putting a ceiling to your future. No institution worth it's salt takes the Nigerian graduate seriously. The education system has collapsed!!!!
2. sloppiness, no attention to detail and no sense of professionalism.
When you call yourself a graduate in Mass Com and aspire to be a journalist, you are showcasing your talents to the world and prospective employers and you cannot even check your work before you submit, it shows you have no professional pride. If you cannot even put in the effort for yourself , how can your employer expect that you will be thorough and put in effort in your work for him? This is a societal malaise that inflicts us as a nation, you tell a Nigerian youth or graduate something eleven times, he does the wrong thing twelve times because the Nigerian takes no pride in the quality of his output. They've been so wrongly schooled that it is more stress than it is worth sometimes trying to correct their flaws. Possibly because he is brought up in a system of mediocrity where anything goes that he hasn't cultivated that sense of excellence in work or even possibly knows what quality actually is. It is why even manual laborers from neighboring Benin and Togo are preferred to Nigerian workers. You ask a Nigerian tiler to tile your house and the lines will be crooked, there will be putty all over the tiles and yet he won't see anything wrong with his work while you stand there thinking to yourself how all the money you invested in quality tiles have been ruined by poor workmanship. How often have you seen works by Nigerian artisans and you wonder to yourself, didn't the person who did this stand back to appraise his work, can't he see this thing is upside down? The other day it was reported that the tires in the car that killed Ocholi were installed incorrectly and you ask yourself, what kind of vulcanizer, who does a professional and this for a living, installs a directional tyre on a wheel with the wrong direction when the roll direction is clearly stated on the trye? Employers do not want people you have to keep supervising, to ensure a job is done well. Whatever your line of work, if I pay you to do a job, I shouldn't have to keep monitoring you to make sure you do not ignore the BASICS! You employ people to perform tasks or roles so you can focus your energies on other things. If an employer has to keep watching over your work just to make sure it is done well, then at some point as an employer you will ask himself, why am I employing this guy if I keep having to do his work for him and then the obvious question becomes, why do I bother to employ you? When you work for me you represent my organization, if you put out a shoddy job then you make my organization look bad and it reflects on me. So if you are somebody that has no sense of quality, who is not thorough, who does not take pride in his work or has no sense of what is acceptable and what isn't, somebody with a mentality of "we can manage it" then good employers won't want to employ you. This is the second problem with Nigerian graduates. I understand that a new graduate is inexperienced and needs supervision in certain matters but there are certain BASICS that employers expect when you say you are Graduate in whatever field. The same reason why people shun Nigerian craftsmen is the same reason why Employers shun Nigerian graduates.......Quality of output!!!
3. initiative and intellect.
This is basically about the content, I suppose the content is ok for a fresh graduate but the truth is he hasn't written anything that is not in the public domain. The issue of legislator salaries is known, youth unemployment is known what is he writing about that I didn't already know? If everybody knows something, then it is not news......and then he talks about mosquitoes in Denmark. There aren't mosquitoes in Denmark, not because their system works but because Denmark is just not the natural environment for mosquitoes. A journalist is supposed to make you think, either through your content, by breaking news..i.e facts the public is not aware of, or by giving you a different insight or perspective into a story or through your style of writing. He did neither, I don't want to hammer him too much on this but this is not someone on his way to winning a pullitzer prize. Point is, I won't remember him because his article did not stir up anything, provoke any new thought.
You are writing an article on youth employment, why don't you show some initiative and interview some of the employers, ask them for their take on the issue. Telling the public one more time that youths are having problems getting jobs is Lazy journalism. With some initiative, he could have interviewed the employers themselves because these are the people who are not employing the graduates. Ask them why aren't you employing Nigerian graduates!!!! He had a great opportunity to make a name for himself with an article in vanguard but fluffed his lines, because Nigerians rarely show show initiative.
So to summarize here is an author, a young graduate who seeks a career in journalism and he gets a big break with an opportunity to write an article in a national daily, an opportunity to showcase his talents. An opportunity to showcase his quality to a prospective employer, an article that some publisher looking for quality talent will surely read, or it might be a multinational organization looking for someone to join their PR/media team and what does he do? He litters his article with grammatical errors, he cant be bothered to proofread his article and he doesn't really say anything that we don't already know, therefore not displaying any unique intellect. It is ironic that he chose to write about unemployment because in the end, he showcases precisely why Nigerian graduates are roaming the streets unemployed.....poor education, no initiative, no intelligence. There are jobs out there, believe me employers are always moaning that quality graduates are hard to find but this my friend, is why Nigerian graduates are roaming the streets unemployed, there degrees are worthless.
The solution for the Nigerian graduate is
1) Come to terms with your reality, hard as it may be. That you don't like what is said does not make it untrue. If you were taught by a quack, then you can only be a quack. If your lecturer or teacher is really that good, why is he teaching in a run-down decrepit system? So make allowance for the reality that maybe you aren't as good ar as knowledgeable as you think and despite what your certificate says, you do not know what you think you know and very likely you aren't as good as your certificate says you are. Understand that as a graduate of a Nigerian University you are not seen in favorable light by the premium employers, you are already at a disadvantage, so you have to stand out to get a look in. You are also now competing with the multitude of Nigerians who are now going abroad for their education, so the odds are stacked against you. The good thing is that with the internet, there are limitless free professional resources for self improvement, you have no excuse not to better yourself and make up for the deficiencies in the education system.
2) Always pay attention to detail, take pride in your work, let your work always stand out. there is so much mediocrity out there that employers notice those who stand out and it doesn't take much to stand out. Standing out in Nigeria does not even mean being brilliant, Just doing the basics without errors is a priceless commodity in Nigeria, ask any employer!!!
3) show initiative, think outside the box
A nigerian graduate who shows just 2 of these qualities stands a much better chance of finding and keeping a job, because the rest are so bad.

Can I support your answer with: new, existing, and potential drivers should go to proper driving schools. If not to learn how to drive, to test your knowledge.

I highly recommend Komon-Sense School of Motoring in Abuja. Their teaching is second to none. They offer a tester lesson, so you can decide whether or not you want to continue.

Address: 103 Kwame Nkrumah Crescent, Asokoro, Abuja
Email: info@kssm.com.ng
Phone: 07010000175