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PART I
HELPING ACCOUNTING STUDENTS TO BECOME
BETTER COMMUNICATORS
• Motivating Students to Write Well
• Qualities of Effective Writing
• Evaluating Students’ Papers
• Helping Students Improve
HELPING ACCOUNTING STUDENTS TO BECOME
BETTER COMMUNICATORS
Accounting students need to be effective communicators if they are to succeed in their
careers, yet many of them lack the communication skills they need. Our own classroom
experiences have made us aware of their deficiencies, as have comments we hear from the
professionals who hire them after graduation. Almost everyone in the field would agree that
there is a need to help our students to become better communicators, especially better writers.
Some accounting instructors take on this task of teaching writing with reluctance. After all,
the thinking goes, if other people did their jobs (especially English teachers), our students would
already know how to write. Actually, research has shown that the causes of the poor writing
skills we see are complex, and blaming any one group of people or any one institution
oversimplifies the situation. (If we need scapegoats, television, video games, and social media
are probably as good as any.) But whatever the causes of their poor writing, our students still
need help, and they need it now.
Another way to look at this dilemma, however, is the unique opportunity we have to help
accounting students to become better writers (and speakers) about accounting. Writing with
precision and clarity about accounting topics can best be taught within the context of an
accounting class, whether this class is a regular accounting course like principles or investments,
or a special course in communication for accounting students.
Teaching writing within an accounting context offers at least two important advantages.
First, we can design our assignments so that students learn to write the kinds of documents
they’ll encounter in practice. They will thus gain practical experience and a chance to build
usable, job-related skills.
The second advantage is that students are likely to find the writing assignments we give them
meaningful, since they can see the connection between the assignments and job requirements. If
they find the assignments relevant to future job success, they may be motivated to do their best
work and to improve areas where they’re weak.
This question of students’ attitudes toward their writing deserves a closer look.
MOTIVATING STUDENTS TO WRITE WELL
If students are to improve their communication skills, they must be convinced that they will
need these skills to succeed in their careers. Our first task, then, is to convince them that
communication skills are indeed important.
There are several ways to convince them. The first chapter of Effective Writing contains a
number of quotations from practicing accountants that attest to the increasing importance of
good writing skills. We can reinforce what the students read in Effective Writing by giving them
opportunities to hear firsthand about the importance of writing skills on the job. We can share
our own professional experiences, and we can invite speakers into the classroom to talk about the
kinds of documents entry-level accountants are expected to write. Accountants in practice make
good speakers, both recent graduates and well-established, successful professionals.
Even after students are convinced that they need to be good writers, however, there still may
be other attitude problems we need to be aware of. Many students dislike writing, and they may
even be afraid to write for fear of failure. These negative attitudes probably result from bad
experiences they’ve had in other courses, especially courses where they’ve received too much
negative feedback on their papers.
It is possible to help students overcome these self-defeating attitudes. One way is to
recognize and reward what they do reasonably well, a strategy discussed in later sections of this
manual. Another way to give them a better attitude about their writing is to stress two attributes
of the writing they’ll do in our courses:
• They’ll be writing about accounting, which they both understand and find interesting.
Papers written about accounting topics should be easier for them than, say, an analysis of
a poem or a research paper for a history course. It’s always easier to write on a subject we
feel comfortable with.
• Documents written for business, such as memos and letters, should be both simple and
direct. Many students will find this type of writing easier than the elaborate rhetorical
styles encouraged in some disciplines.
Yet another way to overcome students’ negative attitudes about writing is to emphasize
positive rather than negative feedback on their writing. One approach is to give them either a
good grade (perhaps a C or better) or no grade at all; papers receiving no grade are then revised
until they merit a decent grade (perhaps up to a C). Later sections of this manual will discuss
this strategy further.
In truth, many students are capable of writing better than they think they can, or than they are
sometimes willing to show us. The key is motivating them to put out their best effort, instead of
just the minimum needed to get by. They also must be willing to work hard to improve the areas
where they are weak. We can motivate our students to improve their writing skills, then, by
convincing them that they need these skills for professional success, and by giving them the
encouragement they need to overcome their anxieties.
Another way to motivate students is to assign papers that simulate the kinds of documents
they will write on the job. The assignments in Effective Writing resemble writing done by
accounting professionals, with some adjustment made for the technical mastery of the students.
You may also want to design your own writing assignments to reinforce the concepts taught in
accounting coursework. The next part of the manual will provide suggestions on how to design
your own assignments.
QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE WRITING
If our students are to write effectively on the job, it makes sense that we stress the qualities of
effective business writing in our assignments. Figure 1−2 in the text summarizes the qualities
they should strive for in their writing; we should then stress these same criteria when we evaluate
their papers.
1
Let’s look at problems students may have incorporating these qualities into their writing and
how we can evaluate papers based on these criteria.
1. Be sure that the accounting content is correct and complete. Have you addressed all
relevant accounting issues?
This criterion of effective writing means that the writer has fully analyzed the assignment
and has met the requirements for content. There is often a strong correlation between a writer’s
understanding of accounting content and the effectiveness of the writing, but this relationship
may not be apparent at first glance. In fact, a paper may be labeled as poorly written when the
real problem is that the writer didn’t understand the material being discussed. After all, no one
can write clearly about a topic that he or she doesn’t understand.
Unfortunately, many students try to disguise their lack of knowledge when they write. All
too often they have learned through experience that the “shotgun approach” may work well on
essay exams and other assigned writing projects. Using this approach, students will write
sentences that vaguely address the issues in the assignment, inserting the correct buzzwords at
regular intervals. This strategy may work if busy instructors don’t have the time to read the
students’ responses carefully.
If we insist that students address the issues clearly and completely, our students will not only
become better writers, but they’ll also improve their mastery of the accounting concepts about
which they are writing. Studies have shown that writing about a concept is one way to increase
understanding: the act of writing can show the writer (and the instructor) what is understood and
what is still unclear.
2
1
The seven criteria in Figure 1
−
2 summarize the eighteen guidelines of effective writing in Chapters 1
−
6 of the text.
The purpose of the expanded list is to take the students in some detail through the steps of the writing process.
2
Lee Odell, “Process of Writing and the Process of Learning.” College Composition and Communication. (February
1980): 41-50.
2. Think carefully and critically about the issues with which you’re dealing. Anticipate
questions and objections your readers may raise.
As experienced accountants know, sometimes the solution to an accounting problem may not
be immediately obvious. In fact, sometimes an accounting problem may have more than one
plausible solution. These gray areas in accounting issues will challenge students to think
critically.
Students looking for quick answers to accounting questions may not be prepared for the
research and thinking necessary to evaluate alternative approaches. You can help them learn
these skills by discussing complex cases in class, illustrating how the issues may be regarded
from multiple perspectives. You might also have students discuss cases in small groups. Often
different students will suggest several solutions to a problem. They will learn to think critically if
they argue for and against the different solutions. The group might finally reach a consensus on
the preferred solutions, or it might acknowledge that a good argument could be made for more
than one approach.
Another problem may arise when students write memos, letters, or reports to a hypothetical
client. Especially if their recommended solution will be controversial, they may not realize the
importance of anticipating the client’s questions and objections. Sometimes students believe they
should provide only reasons for their recommended solution, but they should also acknowledge
and respond to anticipated objections of the reader. Remind students that they will appear more
credible if they show that they have researched the issues thoroughly, considered them from all
perspectives, and thought carefully about the implications of the preferred solution.
Chapter 7 of the text will help students with critical thinking skills.
3. Write the document with a particular reader in mind. Check that issues are discussed
on a level that the reader can understand. For most documents, it’s better to focus on
practical, explicit advice related to the case you are discussing, rather than general
accounting theory.
Unless they have had previous courses in business communication or technical writing, most
students will never have thought about the importance of reader analysis. Rather, all their papers
will be targeted to the course instructor as the primary reader. If they are to become effective
writers, however, they need to think about the needs and interests of different readers and plan
their papers accordingly. This criterion of effective writing is particularly important for
accountants, since the readers they encounter have a wide variety of interests and expertise in
accounting.
Once they start thinking about their readers’ needs, most students can adjust the technical
level and style of their documents so that they are appropriate. A bigger challenge for some of
them is to write concrete advice for the situation identified in the assignment. The focus of their
papers should be on practical, context-specific applications of accounting concepts, rather than
abstract generalizations.
4. Write as concisely as possible, given the reader’s needs and the issues to be addressed.
Students may have a hard time believing that they will be rewarded for concise writing,
because many of them have been taught in the past that longer papers get better grades. They are
used to writing papers that must have a minimum number of pages in order to be acceptable, and
many of them will pad their papers to get this minimum length. Of course, instructors who
assign papers of a certain minimum length intend that the papers be thoroughly researched, in-
depth discussions rather than hurried, superficial treatments. But the students often interpret this
requirement to mean that more is better.
We may have better luck teaching our students to be concise if we require papers to be under
a certain maximum length. Then they’ll be forced to say what is really important without excess
words, sentences, or pages.
5. Develop a style that is clear and readable. Choose words that the reader will
understand, and construct sentences that convey your meaning with precision and
clarity.
One way to help students write with clarity is to remind them that effective business writing
is simple and direct: relatively short (but not choppy) sentences and word choices that are as
familiar as possible, given the need to write with precision. This advice will help those students
who believe that writing should be composed of long, complex sentences and esoteric
vocabulary. It will also be a corrective for those older, more experienced students who have
grown accustomed to the turgid prose style often called “officialese.”
Harder to help is that small group of students whose writing is awkward or unclear because
they lack an adequate vocabulary or other basic verbal skills. These are the students who don’t
handle language comfortably: word choices are not precise or idiomatic, and sentence structures
are not clear and readable.
Causes of these problems are complex and vary from student to student. One possible cause
might be that these students have not read sufficiently over their lifetimes and, thus, have not
built up a fluency with the language. English may be a second language for some of them, thus
causing potential difficulties.
We can’t always identify the causes of students’ serious verbal deficiencies, but we can help
them improve. We can give them opportunities to write as often as possible and show them the
passages in their papers where they have not used the best word choices or where their sentence
structures are awkward or hard to follow. Then we can ask them to revise the weak passages.
Fortunately, most students can learn to write with precision and clarity once they learn the
criteria of effective business writing. What they need most is feedback on their writing and
sufficient opportunities to write and revise.
6. Structure the document so that it is coherent. The organization should be logical and
the train of thought easy to follow. Summarize main ideas near the beginning of the
document, and begin each paragraph with a topic sentence.
Students’ ability to organize a document coherently depends on their previous training in
composition and their ability to think logically. If they have trouble with organization, the
suggestions in Chapters 2 and 3 of the text should help them progress. Even for those students
who understand the principles of organization, two qualities of business writing may present
challenges.
First, paragraphs in business writing are typically shorter than the paragraphs in other types
of prose. In composition classes, for example, students may have been encouraged to write
paragraphs of up to 150 words. In business writing, the recommended length for paragraphs is
generally a maximum of four or five sentences.
The other problem students may have with the organization of business documents is
learning to write with a deductive arrangement of ideas. With a deductive organization,
conclusions and main ideas are stated first, followed by the support. Thus, we encourage
students to summarize their conclusions near the beginning of their documents, to begin each
section of a document with a statement of the main idea being developed, and to begin each
paragraph with a strong topic sentence.
Most students will have learned the principles of paragraph organization, including the use of
topic sentences. Yet even the best writers may have trouble with an overall deductive
organization of a document: stating the conclusions before the support. Most students want to
take their readers through the same inductive process of gathering and analyzing data that they
went through to derive the conclusions.
3
Thus, they may write introductions like this one:
This memo will compare LIFO and FIFO and then identify the inventory flow assumption that
is best for your company.
The readers of this memo might not learn what the writer recommends until the last part of
the paper. A better statement might be something like this:
While both LIFO and FIFO offer certain advantages, the nature of your inventory makes FIFO
the better choice for your company.
One way to help students write deductively is to insist that they summarize their conclusions
or main ideas at the beginning of the document, in the introduction or executive summary, for
example.
3
We have used the terms “deductive” and “inductive” here in a rhetorical sense, which at times may appear to be
inconsistent with the way these terms are used in philosophy and empirical research. By “deductive” we mean
simply that conclusions are given first, followed by the support. With an inductive structure, on the other hand,
conclusions are stated after a discussion of the analysis.
7. Revise the document so that it is polished and professional. It should be free of all
spelling errors and typos; grammatical errors should not detract from the message.
When some people talk about “effective writing,” all they have in mind is correct grammar
and mechanics: “good English.” But effectively written documents involve a number of
dimensions. In the summary of effective writing criteria we are discussing here, correct
grammar and mechanics appear in only one of seven guidelines.
We realize that students must write with Standard English if they are to be successful in the
accounting profession. Glaring grammatical, mechanical, or typographical errors make the
writer seem either poorly educated or careless. Yet some accounting instructors may feel unsure
about evaluating students’ papers for Standard English usage.
How to evaluate students’ papers and help them overcome their writing deficiencies will be
discussed further in later sections of this manual. But for now, let’s emphasize one important
point: grammatical, mechanical, and typographical errors should not distract the reader. When
you read your students’ papers, you shouldn’t be distracted. If a word or passage bothers you,
underline it or make a note in the margin. You don’t necessarily have to identify the nature of
the error, but if it interferes with receiving the message, then the writer needs to know. Later,
when the paper is revised, the writer can work on the troubling word or passage.
The evaluation of grammatical usage errors according to their distraction potential has been
the subject of research in business communication. One study suggests that some grammatical
errors are more distracting than others, and that our emphasis should be on the errors that
seriously interfere with reading.
4
This finding shows why accounting instructors make good evaluators of students’ English
usage: If a troubling word or passage bothers you, mark it on the student’s paper. If you don’t
think the problem is particularly distracting, then it’s probably not important enough to worry
about.
By definition, Standard English consists of the usages that educated readers find acceptable.
Accounting instructors are educated readers, so they’re fully qualified to decide whether their
students’ writing is acceptable.
Let’s turn now to a fuller discussion of how to evaluate students’ papers.
EVALUATING STUDENTS’ PAPERS
The next few pages first discuss some basic approaches to evaluating students’ writing and
then look at two specific scoring methodologies you can use with your classes.
4
Donald J. Leonard and Jeanette W. Gilsdorf, “Language in Change: Academics’ and Executives’ Perceptions of
Usage Errors,” The Journal of Business Communication, 27:2 (Spring 1990): 137-158.
Evaluation Strategies
Evaluations of students’ papers can be a way to help them improve their writing. When you
evaluate their papers, keep these general guidelines in mind.
Use the criteria of effective business writing as the basis of your evaluation. Keeping these
criteria in mind will help you give your students constructive suggestions for improving their
writing: what they do well and where they need to improve. Moreover, if they know in advance
what criteria you’ll use as the basis of your evaluations, they’ll be much more likely to write in
the desired way.
Use your evaluations as a way to help students learn. Evaluating students’ papers can help
them improve their writing if we regard evaluation as more than marking mistakes and taking off
points. We’ll help students learn if we identify their strengths as well as their weaknesses and
give them opportunities to revise their writing to make it more effective.
Comment constructively. Comment when students do something well. Research in
educational psychology has shown conclusively that most students learn best when they are
given more positive than negative feedback. In other words, they need to know when they do
something right.
As a practical matter, it’s often easier to identify students’ errors than to identify what they
do reasonably well. It’s tempting to say, “If I don’t mark it wrong, you can assume it’s okay.”
But students need positive feedback for at least two reasons. First, they may not realize that
something they’re doing is the correct way. Identifying their strengths helps to ensure that they
continue writing in that way. Moreover, when we praise students for what they do well, we may
give them the courage and self-esteem they need to work on areas where they’re weak.
When you evaluate a student’s paper, identify several specific passages for comment. For
example, you might identify a well-expressed idea, good example, or well-organized paragraph.
You might also mark passages that can be improved: an awkward or unclear sentence, a
paragraph that is hard to follow, or a poor choice of words. You can also comment on qualities
of the paper as a whole. For example, you could praise a paper for being concise or readable, or
you might suggest that the writer use a computer to check for spelling or typographical errors.
Encourage revisions. Another way to help students improve their writing is to give them
opportunities to revise. When students don’t write as well as we think they are capable of
writing, we’ll help them learn if we ask them to revise their papers according to the suggestions
we’ve made in the margins. These suggestions would, of course, be in line with the criteria of
effective business writing.
Revisions can be handled several ways. If time permits, you might review students’ papers
while they are still in the draft stages. The students would then revise their papers according to
your suggestions as they prepare the final draft. If you have small classes, you might review all
the drafts, but a more practical plan for large classes would be to focus your attention on the
students with the greatest problems.
Alternatively, you could ask for a revision of certain papers after you have evaluated a set of
final drafts. You could ask students to revise if their papers are clearly substandard, or if the
students would otherwise benefit from rewriting. For example, you might ask that a very wordy
paper be revised even though the paper is otherwise satisfactory.
Students will probably not resent revising their papers if they see that their grades will
improve from extra effort. When we evaluate a set of final drafts, often we will mark the papers
as A, B, C, or “Revise.” Papers that would receive less than a C receive no grade at all; these are
the ones that must be revised. If the revised paper shows a serious effort at improvement, then
the writer can receive up to a C. In this way, grades on their papers may help students’ course
grades, but they’ll have to work hard to write acceptable papers.
Assign several short papers. Another way to help students build their writing skills
incrementally is to assign several short papers during the term, rather than one long one. You
might assign three or four two-page papers due at intervals during the term, instead of one ten-to
twenty-page paper due at the end.
When students write several papers, they can learn from mistakes made earlier, primarily by
studying your comments and suggestions. They also improve their writing skills by repeated
practice of the principles taught in Effective Writing.
Keep a balance between high standards and realistic expectations. Maintaining high
standards of performance at the same time we’re realistic about our expectations might seem to
be a contradiction. Actually, the two approaches are complementary.
On the one hand, it seems to be most students’ nature to want to do as little as possible to get
by, whether “getting by” to an individual means passing or making an A. Therefore, if we insist
on high standards of performance, we encourage students to do better than the minimum. High
standards help students stretch their customary levels of performance.
To illustrate how this approach works, think about your students’ habits of reading and
following directions carefully. If your students are like most of ours, they tend to scan hurriedly
or even ignore handouts that give instructions for an assignment. They may remember the main
points but overlook the details, such as a request that they double space their papers and staple
them together. They also tend to listen haphazardly to oral directions given in class.
Insisting that students follow directions may seem petty. But it illustrates one application of
high standards. All students are capable of following instructions, once they acquire the habit of
careful listening, reading, and attention to detail. Of course, if, after the careful reading of an
assignment, the students are confused about the instructions or otherwise have a question, we
would encourage them to ask for clarification.
On the other hand, few students are capable of writing flawlessly, just as most aren’t capable
of working all their assigned accounting problems correctly. To expect more of them than they
are able to do is to invite frustration for both them and us.
A realistic goal for us and our students is that they improve as much as possible in their
writing as they work on our assignments. How well they learn to write depends on many factors,
including how well they wrote to start with, and how hard they work to improve.
The discussion of evaluation so far has stressed basic strategies and underlying philosophies
of writing evaluation. We turn now to specific ways to score students’ papers.
Scoring Methodologies
Two methods of scoring are particularly useful for evaluating papers for accounting courses:
scoring by means of an analytic scale and general impression (or holistic) scoring. Research has
shown both methods to be reliable.
5
Analytic Scale. To score papers with an analytic scale, you first decide on the criteria you
want to evaluate for each paper, including both the accounting content and the quality of the
writing. Then, using a Likert scale, you assign a score for each criterion; the score for the entire
paper is the sum of the individual scores.
The analytic scale can be set up in a variety of ways. Page 114 shows a sample scale based
on the criteria of effective writing discussed earlier and summarized in Figure 1
−
2 in the text.
It would be possible to weight the criteria unevenly. For example, you might weight the first
criterion (correct and complete accounting content) more heavily than the others. Page 115 gives
an example of this kind of scale.
Advantages of scoring with an analytic scale are that students can see exactly where their
papers are strong and where they need to improve. They will thus understand why they received
a certain grade on a paper. Students may also perceive analytic scoring as more objective than
general impression scoring, which is discussed below.
Disadvantages of analytic scoring are that the total paper may be worth more (or less) than
the sum of its parts. For example, a paper may have accurate and complete accounting content;
it may even be concise and well organized
⎯
but terrible grammatical and mechanical errors may
so detract from the paper that its overall quality would be unsatisfactory. Analytic scoring does
not allow for this possibility, unlike general impression scoring.
5
See, for example, Lynn Winters, “The Effects of Differing Response Criteria on the Assessment of Writing
Competence” (Los Angeles: University of California, 1978).
Another disadvantage of analytic scoring may be that for some students scores on individual
qualities of a paper may provide too much negative feedback. Earlier we discussed the
advantages of limiting negative comments.
General impression scoring. An alternative to analytic scoring is general impression scoring,
often called holistic scoring. With this method, a paper is given one score based on the overall
impression it makes on the reader. Both the accounting content and the quality of the writing are
taken into account. The paper is evaluated as a whole
⎯
thus the term “holistic” scoring.
To evaluate a set of papers using this approach, you would read through a set of papers,
making marginal comments and suggestions as you read. You would then sort the papers into
stacks according to their overall quality: one stack of the best papers, one for the worst, and one
or more stacks in between. The stack a given paper is put in determines its score.
General impression scoring allows for the possibility that the quality of a paper taken as a
whole may differ from the quality of its individual characteristics
⎯
in other words, the whole
may not equal the sum of its parts.
This method of scoring can also reflect the relationship between a paper’s content and the
quality of the writing: how well a paper is written depends to a high degree on how well the
writer understands what is being discussed. Thus the evaluations of accounting content and
effective writing overlap. General impression scoring allows for this relationship.
General impression scoring also works well with an evaluation strategy that emphasizes
positive rather than negative feedback. To use this strategy, you could stack the papers into four
piles: A papers, B papers, C papers, and papers to be revised.
Pages 116–117 provide two versions of a cover sheet you can use with general impression
scoring. As an alternative, you can write these comments directly on the paper.
A disadvantage of general impression scoring is that students may perceive it to be too
subjective. In reality, however, research shows this method to be close to analytic scoring in
reliability.
In summary, the choice between analytic and general impression scoring is a matter of
personal preference. There are some tradeoffs in choosing between them, but both scoring
methods are suitable for evaluating papers written for accounting classes.
HELPING STUDENTS IMPROVE
Earlier sections of this manual have already discussed several ways to help students improve
their writing skills. Here’s a summary:
1. Comment on students’ writing strengths, and give constructive suggestions for
improvement. Praise reinforces what students do well and gives them the self-
confidence they need to improve.
2. As you evaluate students’ papers, focus on the seven criteria of effective writing
summarized in Figure 1
−
2.
3. Give students opportunities to revise their writing.
4. Assign several short papers during a quarter so that students can build their skills
incrementally.
5. Offer to review working drafts of students’ papers, as time permits.
6. Keep a balance between high standards and realistic expectations.
In the remainder of this section we present some additional ways to help your students
improve their writing.
Assign chapters in Effective Writing. At the beginning of the term, assign the first eight
chapters, which provide basic instruction for all documents. Then ask students to study
additional chapters according to the type of documents you want them to work on, such as
memos or reports.
Provide classroom instruction as time permits. Give your students the guidance they need to
complete your writing assignments. You might go over with them the criteria for effective
writing, emphasizing qualities with which they may not have had experience, such as reader
analysis. In addition to explaining each writing assignment, offer to discuss any questions or
problems that arise as they work on the assignment.
To help you with classroom instruction, Part V of this manual contains masters you can use
to make overhead transparencies, slides, and handouts..
Finally, after you’ve graded a set of papers you might copy and distribute models of good
papers written by members of the class (with their prior permission, of course). Discuss the
strengths of the models
⎯
why you think they are effective. You can also use parts of different
papers to illustrate effective writing strategies, such as a good introduction or document design.
Provide handouts. In addition to models of good papers, you can give your students other
handouts that will help them write well. Part V of this manual contains masters you can
duplicate to distribute. The chapter commentaries suggest some of the ways you can use these
handouts to accompany assigned readings and writing projects.
Have students critique each other’s papers (peer reviews). With peer reviews, students
exchange papers, review them carefully, and then comment on the papers’ strengths and needed
improvements. This activity can be done either in class, perhaps in groups of three or four
students, or it can be done out of class in teams of two.
Students gain useful experience when their writing is reviewed by a colleague. This is good
preparation for future employment, since supervisors frequently review the writing of entry-level
accountants and send it back to be revised. Moreover, in critiquing the writing of others,
students will learn to read their own papers more carefully with an eye toward effective revision.
Another advantage of peer reviews is that they offer students a chance to improve their
interpersonal skills. When they discuss the strengths and weaknesses of another student’s paper,
they need to be both honest and tactful. Students hearing feedback on their papers should, in
turn, be open to suggestions, rather than defensive.
Students will think that the main advantage of peer reviews is that the grades they receive on
their papers may improve. In order for this process to be most effective, poor writers should not
critique each other’s papers. Obviously, some students will benefit more than others in this
process, according to the effectiveness of the critique they receive. For this reason, it is better for
students to work in groups of three or four so that each person has a better chance of receiving a
helpful review. A handout that gives detailed instructions and guidelines for the peer review
process is provided on pages 109–113 of this manual. Peer reviews are also discussed further
beginning on page 24.
If your school has an English clinic or writing lab, ask students with serious problems to get
extra help. Many colleges and universities now have these clinics or labs to help students who
are not currently enrolled in an English course. Such a facility should be especially helpful to
those students who have difficulty organizing their papers or writing in Standard English.
Refer students to specific chapters in Effective Writing. When you evaluate an individual
student’s writing, you may notice specific writing problems that the student needs to work on.
One way to help the student is to recommend that he or she study specific chapters in Effective
Writing that address those problems. Chapters covering common problems are shown on the
following page:
Problem Chapters
Problem Chapters
Deciding what to say, planning a paper Ch. 2
Writing appropriately for the reader Ch. 2
Revising and proofreading Ch. 2
Organizing and developing a paper Chs. 2, 3, 9, 10, 11
Organizing and developing paragraphs Ch. 3
Conciseness Ch. 4
Clarity and readability Chs. 4 and 5
Standard English, correct grammar Chs. 4 and 5
Document design, attractive presentation Ch. 6
Critical Thinking Ch. 7
Accounting research, source documentation Ch. 8
You will also find other topics listed in the index of Effective Writing.
