Page 86 - Literacy in the New Media Age

WHAT IS LITERACY? 75

2 Supervision of the attendance/flexitime system for all Institute staff.
3 Co-ordination of student enquiries and related activities.
4 Assist in the organization of student admission/enrolment/registration/
assessment.
5 Prepare documentation for submission to the Institute’s Admission and
Progression Committee and act as an Executive Officer to the
Committee.
6 Ensure the accurate maintenance of student records.
7 Preparation of correspondence relating student records/progression/
transcripts.

Example 2: position description
In all positions held, good oral and written communication skills have
been essential in satisfying job requirements. Communication at all levels
from students to company executives, to College Principals has required
clear concise expression together with attention to confidentiality and
sensitivity.
Supervisory and management skills have been developed over my
career. Most recently in Student Administration, it has been my
responsibility to form work teams, oversee work flow and set short term
goals to meet deadlines. Immediate responsiveness to client/student
enquiries has been required in previous positions, whilst the planning and
organisation of day to day business was carried out. Skills of resource
organisation and decision-making were quickly acquired.
Experience with computer systems has been gained whilst working with
…
Example 2: job application

The points I wish to make here are about the productive potential of the
resources of the language; the near reproduction of the resources in the form in
which they have been received, and what that might mean; and the role of power
in this.
To take the first point first, the PD is an example par excellence of the heavy,
nominalised (that is, noun-like static, frozen forms derived from full clauses with
actional verbs) language, with nouns/nominals of inordinate length and
complexity. The opening nominal is the best (or worst) example: ‘The
supervision of office staff providing administrative services to the academic
staff’ is one single nominal, that is, a syntactic element which acts as a single
noun. Other examples abound: ‘co-ordination and supervision of the office staff
providing administrative support’. These are noun-entities formed by a
productive linguistic process, in response to an environment of certain social
processes and structures. Where these occur regularly and frequently over a
period, they come to seem not like new events each time but as the existence of a
stable phenomenon outside time – something which is always like that, best