This study aimed to provide insights on the perceptions of engineering students from two educational paths in Singapore of desired graduate attributes by employers. Research questions: (1) Do graduates from the polytechnic and junior college paths have similar perceptions with regard to the ranking of desirable graduate attributes? (2) If not, in what ways are their perceptions different? Literature review: A review of literature on employers' ranking of desirable graduate attributes revealed mismatches in employers' and graduates' rankings. There has not been any published study on student awareness of employability skills in Singapore in particular. Hence, this study investigated the perceptions of final-year engineering students from two different educational paths of their ranking of graduate attributes. Methodology: The students were asked to rank eight attributes and explain their ranking from an employer's perspective. Results: The findings show that communication, teamwork, and problem-solving were ranked the top three desirable attributes by both groups of students. However, polytechnic students seem to reflect greater familiarity and confidence in tackling workplace requirements compared to junior college students. The implications of the findings are presented.

of writing: the use of abbreviations, the division of compound words, some rules for spelling properly, among other things.This comprehensive book is aimed at students of technical writing and of English in two-year colleges.It is devised as a typical textbook: The margins are wide enough for notes, the terms likely to be new to students are printed in expanded boldface type and their meaning in light italics.Also printed in light italics are points the author thinks worth emphasizng.The book is easy to read: physically because the print is on non-glare paper, conceptually because it is well written and well organized, and that, after all, is the acid test of the quality of a book on composition.Superficially, nothing about the book suggests that it is a book on technical writing.One sees no charts, no graphs, no exploded views, no instructions on how to write an abstract.And yet this book is ideally suited for learning about or teach ing technical writing because technical writing, to attain its objective, must reflect the precision and discipline of thought basic to science and technology.That is the topic of this book.The manners and conventions of presentation, namely, that in technical writing one would use a table to compare or contrast pieces of apparatus of different make or vintage, that one would use a step-action chart or a flowchart to describe a process-all this, though important for the efficient transfer of information, is nevertheless somewhat peripheral to the meaning of technical writing.Students who learn about composition from

American scientists and engineers are lucky. If their reports are unreadable, they can study technical writing at the nearest university, community college, hotel seminar, or in-house course. Their British counterparts are less fortunate. According to a British friend of mine who just earned his Ph.D. degree in engineering, the British are not taught to write past primary school. Those who study engineering at a polytechnic, an advanced college of technology, or at a university must write the best they can. Too often their best writing does not read well.

Technical writing means many things to many people. The instructive literature for the field generally either emphasizes that portion of the field conforming to the author's interpretation or attempts to cover the entire field with general concepts and admonitions. Rarely does a book appear that covers as much, as clearly, and in as practical a manner as Technically — Write! by R. S. Blicq. Mr. Blicq is Head of the Industrial and Technology Communication Department at Red River Community College, in Winnepeg, Canada. He obviously has had extensive experience teaching technical communications and, in this text book, he speaks familiarly at the undergraduate level. More than this, his presentation holds a warmth and intimacy that is uncharacteristic of instructional literature: the professor is speaking to you in his classroom. Although the physical scientist and even the graduate engineer may tend to view the style as being below his level of sophistication, Mr. Blicq has packed almost every principle of clear technical exposition on the widest variety of communications in this 380-odd page book, along with “problems” in the form of work assignments at the end of each chapter. Even for the professional communicator, this book holds much of value as a reference when he is faced with an assignment in a portion of the field outside of his specialty.