What? You Want Me to Write?!

Abstract

1. Purpose. This paper sets out to report on and evaluate the writing skills of a cohort of accounting and business students. 2. Design/methodology/approach. Students were asked to write an essay describing their learning experience in an introductory accounting class. These essays were then evaluated by experienced teachers of English. 3. Findings. Major weaknesses are that: there is inadequate engagement with the assignment question; there is a paucity of content; writing is diffuse rather than succinct; there are faults with sentence structure and other errors of English expression. 4. Implications. The research brings to the fore the poor writing ability of university accounting students and lays stress on the need to train and more clearly guide the development of these business related skills. Training may require curriculum adjustment to accommodate additional courses of study. 5. Originality. There is a paucity of material related to the writing skills of accounting and business students and this paper attempts to address this gap. 6. Limitations. The cohort studied came from a private Southern California university and the results may not necessarily reflect the writing skills of other university students. The study needs to be replicated in other settings.