An analysis of teaching strategies designed to improve written communication skills

ABSTRACT

Accounting instructors can embed effective writing into the curriculum, but how much instruction is enough to make a significant improvement in students’ written products? In this quasi-experimental study, we compare the effect of three levels of minimal instructional intervention: all students in the study received a rubric outlining the evaluation criteria and graded feedback on the use of effective business writing (low instruction level); for the medium instruction level, students also received handouts on effective written communication; the high instruction level students received classroom instruction in addition to the handouts, rubric, and feedback. We find that all students show significant improvement in written communication skills in the areas of organization, development, and expression. Students who received the high instruction level show the most improvement. Providing students with the scoring rubric and grading for effective business writing is beneficial to student self-awareness and encourages students to significantly improve their written products.

KEYWORDS:

• Effective written communication
• business communication
• rubric
• curriculum
• employability

Acknowledgments

We thank the external grader, Kinzie Morgan Mallott, for investing the time and effort to score the student papers for this research project. The external grader’s expertise in teaching the English language and in scoring written communication for the Texas State Board for Educator Certification and as a writer for the Educational Testing Service helps to ensure that we do not have biases in the results of the data collected for this project.

The authors also extend our gratitude to Robert Scherer, Mike Wilkins, Stephanie Rasmussen, Diana Young, and Julie Persellin for their thoughtful and critical reviews of our work. We are also grateful to the participants of the Trinity University School of Business Fall 2015 Research Workshop for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Gleim Publications develops study materials and resources to increase the understanding of accounting and improve the chances for passing the Uniform CPA Exam. The 2016 Business environment and concepts (BEC) study guide pages 16 through 18 Written Communication Answering and Grading provides the criteria and guidelines for self-grading the written communication tasks in the areas of organization, development, and expression. The scoring rubric was developed following the suggested criteria and guidelines.

Additional information

Funding

We acknowledge the financial support from the Office of Academic Affairs, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX, USA.