Sometimes, I feel like we are getting distracted.
We focus on writing beautifully. We pick our words with care.
We pay attention to punctuation. We try to avoid grammar and spelling goof-ups.
But do we forget the basics of writing as well?
The No.1 reason for writing badly for eLearning
In his book “The Sense of Style”, Stephen Pinker a cognitive psychologist and linguist wrote:
“The Curse of Knowledge is the single best explanation I know of why good people write bad prose. It simply doesn’t occur to the writer that her readers don’t know what she knows – that they haven’t mastered the patois of her guild, can’t divine the missing steps that seem too obvious to mention, have no way to visualise a scene that to her is as clear as day.”
As far as I know no research exists to determine the reasons for bad writing, and I’m not sure how easy it would be to measure.
But I’m sure Pinker is right.
Because we all assume too easily that learners know what we mean.
Here’s my explanation
What is the Curse of knowledge?
Have you ever had a conversation with an expert and wondered, “What the hell are they talking about?”
I still remember when we first started People Resources Ltd, a forerunner of Business Brains Asia Pacific Ltd, our first conversations with our accountant, he wanted us to be clear about our future tax obligations. He talked about GST software, thresholds, tax exemptions, filing dates, and he spoke in such general terms that we struggled to keep up and we didn’t understand how his advice applied to us.
It’s called the Curse of Knowledge.
I used to think the Curse of Knowledge was something that happened to experts only. But in a way, as trainers, we all act as experts. We have ideas we want to share, and we know something about those ideas that our learners want to, or, need to know.
And that’s where ambiguity and misunderstandings sneak in.
It can happen to all of us.
What science says about the Curse of Knowledge
In their book ‘Made to Stick’ Chip and Dan Heath describe a study in 1990 by Elizabeth Newton.
Newton divided people into tappers and listeners. The tappers would tap out a song and the listeners would have to guess what song it was. This research earned her a PhD in Psychology at Stanford University.
After tapping a song, the tappers were asked how many of the listeners would guess the song right. The tappers were moderately confident. They thought that one in two songs would be guessed correctly.
The truth?
Only 1 in 40 songs were guessed correctly. As writers and speakers, we’re all tappers. We’re all overly confident that we’ll get our learning across. But the truth is that we have often failed.
Why is this?
The tappers knew what song they were tapping. While tapping, they were hearing the songs in their mind, so it seemed obvious to them which song it was. But to listeners, it wasn’t that obvious. They could only hear the tapping – not the words the tappers were hearing in their minds.
As trainers, we’re often overly confident that learners will know what we mean. But our messages may be hidden between the lines.