Frans gave our group of three teams training in Simplified Technical English. He was engaging as a speaker and really made the 2-day training enjoyable and worthwhile. I didn't think we all could use the new ways of writing and thinking that he was teaching, but everyone got on board right away. We continue to use the skills that Frans taught us, with the same type of enthusiasm he brought to the group during training. This was probably the best training I've had at Check Point, in either technical or professional subjects. Top Qualities: Personable, Expert, Creative

The Simplified Technical English course content and requirements provided by Shumin Chen were an absolute good fit with the TCLoc Master's program. A technical communicator has to know about the existing specifications for technical documentation. Furthermore, this course helps the students to acquire new skills in order to enhance the accuracy and clarity of contents.

TAI hired Frans to work with our experienced team and help them to improve their ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English skills. Frans helped us to identify areas for improvement both in our own documents and in those supplied by our customers and partners. At the end of the training, we all had learned simple yet effective methods to improve the quality, readability and compliance of our writing. Most importantly, we learned how to scrutinize text for commonly made mistakes and how to balance compliance with optimum readability. We enjoyed working with Frans, who has a pleasant personality and an open mind. I am happy to recommend him to any company that wants to improve its documentation, be it for compliance reasons or to facilitate translation. Top Qualities: Great Results, Expert, Good Value

The ASD-STE100 course I attended by Shumin was very intensive yet enjoyable. Besides the standard format and company templates used when creating documentation, STE rules helped me understand that there is an alternative approach to technical writing. By shrinking the size of my vocabulary, I am effectively using only one word for one purpose. With STE, my goal is to focus on what I would like to communicate effectively, rather than to simply place information into a template.

STE Rule 1.3 Use approved words only with their approved meaning is my go-to rule. My favourite STE verbs are “examine”, “measure” and “make sure”. I always use the non-approved verbs of “check” and “inspect” before. I highly recommend this course to other people. If most people write with STE, technical work steps will become clearer and easier for understanding. 

The ASD-STE100 workshop conducted by Shufrans TechDocs made for a very good introduction to STE for new as well as intermediate users of the STE writing standard. The presentation on rules was very clear and I liked the emphasis on the fact that the rules are weighted and how one can use them flexibly. The exercises completed during this training were good and provided real world examples in technical writing in a practical way. I'd very likely recommend this course to someone else. This course is a must for any new technical writers or technical publication employees.

The trainer was extremely knowledgeable and personable. She worked with us to resolve concerns and find creative solutions to challenging word choice suggestions. My preferred STE rules include: Limited accepted words in the vocabulary, limited length of sentences, and only using words for the approved meaning. A lot of writing, especially descriptive writing, can be verbose and cumbersome. It seems to me that sometimes engineers use fancy words to sound smarter or to show how complex or advanced the technology is, but that is not always helpful to the average user. As a user, I appreciate simple and clear instructions and explanations. I am hopeful that STE will let me write simply and clearly for our users. Thank you, Shumin! I really enjoyed the presentation and learning more about STE and how to use it.

Simplified Technical English is an important topic for our industry. I've enjoyed learning about all the rules of STE summarised into bite-sized information over the course of 2 training days. The quality of this training has been exceptional!

A very important and highlighted point during the introduction is that STE is an English language specification that is not only applicable for companies in the aerospace & defence industry. Rule 5.2 where you only have one instruction per sentence is important to us. Not being able to use the verb "CHECK' that is only used as an approved STE noun poses a challenge to me all the time. I really appreciate the STE writing rules that give us the possibility to improve the consistency of our documents. The workshop exercises were of high interest value and drive home the point that it is important to learn by doing. Although a time-consuming process, the writing workshop impressed on me that the need to prioritise the analysis of our internal documents. Shumin is a competent trainer who does not only focus on explaining and enforcing the "writing rules", but is always available to understand and empathise with the training needs of the class.

Shumin gave a good introduction to Simplified Technical English. Instead of writing long sentences that are difficult to read, I prefer the STE rule of presenting long sentences in a list that makes it much easier to understand the work that is required to be completed. The STE exercises were pretty engaging, and this is particularly so for day 2 of the rewriting workshop that gave the team a lot of insight into our documentation. Trainees also had the opportunity to replace many unapproved standard English words with STE ones that helped us better appreciate the application of STE rules in a real-world context. This is a training that I have rated 10/10 for.