Human Resource Organises Training for Senior Assistant Registrars and Assistant Registrars on Grammar, Punctuation and Proofreading
The Division of Human Resource has organised a one-day training on the theme “use of grammar, punctuation and proofreading: ensuring professional presentations for Senior Members of the Registrar’s Office (Senior Assistant Registrars and Assistant Registrars)” on Winneba Campus on 27th March, 2017.
The Head of the Junior and Senior Staff Unit at the Division of Human Resource, Mr. Augustus Kwaw Brew, welcoming participants on behalf of the Deputy Registrar, underscored the relevance of the training. He noted that it was meant to build the competency levels of participants in the correct usage of grammar, punctuation and proofreading in communications (verbal and non-verbal). He added that the Division will regularly organise such trainings to build staff competencies to aid in the performances of their duties.
The sub-topics treated included the relationship between grammar and communication, common questions on the mechanics for communication (concord rules of grammar, punctuation errors), the essence of proofreading, and ensuring professional presentation.
The resource person, a lecturer at the Department of Communications and Media Studies and the Coordinator for the Communication Skills Unit, Ms. Christiana Hammond said communication involved the sharing of meaning and not just the exchange of information. She indicated that contexts of every communicative endeavour played a significant role in the sharing of meaning. She further stated that the medium of communication is the message, and as such, care should be taken in the choice of channel as well as the choice of words for the creation of every piece of information. She observed that every language has its systems of realizations and rules of engagements often referred to as the Grammar of that language. Participants were, thus, taken through concord rules of Grammar; the use of Pseudo coordinators; subjects with intervening words or phrases; concord of proximity, notional concord and singular nouns with plural forms.
On punctuation, she noted that they were symbols which aid communication both in speech and in writing at the sentential level and provided the right intonation especially, in discoursal speech. Participants were also taken through the 5 interpenetrative stages of process writing that enabled writers to produce product-oriented pieces of writing.
As a way of guiding participants through Proofreading some guidelines were suggested to include: checking the differences in vocabulary or meaning for purposes of international intelligibility; checking the merging of words in the age of Windows 7 and Windows 10; and seeking affirmation and assistance through peer reading and peer reviewing.
She reminded the participants to keep an immaculate appearance always as frontline executive; be interculturally competent communicators; look out for prompts and facial cues of affirmation during oral presentations so they could lead when the applaud was loudest; and then take steps to manage their communication before their communication manages them.
Present at the workshop were Deputy Registrars of the Offices of the Registrar.
The workshop was coordinated by the Staff Training Officer at the Division of Human Resource, Mr. Isaac Donkoh
Source: Media Relations
.