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Study Notes For Effective Writing: A Handbook for Accountants, 11th Edition

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    CLASS NOTES EFFECTIVE WRITING: A Handbook for Accountants Eleventh Edition Claire B. May, Ph.D. Gordon S. May, Ph.D., CPA University of Georgia, Emeritus

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    iii TABLE OF CONTENTS PART I HELPING ACCOUNTING STUDENTS TO BECOME BETTER COMMUNICATORS ............................................................ 1 Motivating Students to Write Well .............................................................................4 Qualities of Effective Writing .....................................................................................5 Evaluatin g Students’ Papers .......................................................................................9 Helping Students Improve ........................................................................................13 PART II COMMUNICATION INSTRUCTION INTEGRATED INTO AN ACCOUNTING COURSE ................................................. 17 Writing Assignments ................................................................................................19 Oral Communication Skills ......................................................................................22 Interpersonal Skills ...................................................................................................23 Assigning Chapters in Effective Writing ...................................................................25 PART III ACCOUNTING COMMUNICATION COURSES ........ 27 Planning the Course ..................................................................................................29 Planning Classroom Activities ..................................................................................29 Inviting Guest Speakers to Your Class .....................................................................30 Writing with Precision About Accounting ...............................................................30 Course Outline ..........................................................................................................31 PART IV CHAPTER COMMENTARIES ........................................ 33 Chapter 1 Accountants as Communicators ............................................................35 Chapter 2 The Writing Process: An Overview .....................................................37 Chapter 3 Coherent Writing: Organizing Business Documents ............................43 Chapter 4 A Sense of Style: Writing with Conciseness and Clarity .....................47 Chapter 5 Standard English: Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling ......................53 Chapter 6 Format for Clarity: Document Design ..................................................61 Chapter 7 Thinking on the Job: Higher Order Thinking Skills ..............................63 Chapter 8 Accounting Research .............................................................................65 Chapter 9 Letters ....................................................................................................69

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    iv Chapter 10 Memos and Briefing Documents ...........................................................73 Chapter 11 Reports and Discussion Papers..............................................................77 Chapter 12 E-Communication and Social Media ....................................................81 Chapter 13 Writing for Exams: Professional Certification and Academic Exams .83 Chapter 14 Writing for Employment: Résumés and Letters of Application ...........85 Chapter 15 Writing for Publication ..........................................................................87 Chapter 16 Oral Communication: Listing and Speaking .........................................89 PART V MASTERS FOR SLIDES AND HANDOUTS................... 93 Effective Writing for Accountants ............................................................................95 The Writing Process ..................................................................................................96 Planning a Paper .......................................................................................................97 Audience Analysis ....................................................................................................98 Coherent Organization ..............................................................................................99 Active and Passive Voice........................................................................................100 Prepositional Phrases ..............................................................................................101 Subjects and Verbs ..................................................................................................102 Clear Pronoun Reference ........................................................................................103 Sample Memo .........................................................................................................104 Sample Letter ..........................................................................................................105 Guidelines for Letters and Memos ..........................................................................106 Parts of a Formal Report .........................................................................................108 Peer Review Process  Directions ..........................................................................109 Peer Review  Letters, Memos, and Reports ..........................................................110 Peer Review Summary ............................................................................................112 Evaluation  Peer Review Process ..........................................................................113 Paper Evaluation .....................................................................................................114 Paper Evaluation .....................................................................................................115 Instructor’s Checksheet: Criteria of Effective Writing ...........................................116 Paper Evaluation .....................................................................................................117 Guidelines for E-mail ..............................................................................................118 Oral Presentations: Preparation...............................................................................119 Tips for Speakers ....................................................................................................120 Oral Presentation  Evaluation ...............................................................................121 Oral Presentations  Peer Evaluation ......................................................................122 Intermediate Accounting; Group Project ................................................................123 Team Evaluation Form ...........................................................................................125

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    v To the users of this manual: This manual was written for teachers who want to help their accounting students to become better communicators. As a supplement to Effective Writing: A Handbook for Accountants , 11th ed., it is intended for those who include a communication component in their accounting courses, as well as those who teach courses in accounting communication. It will also be helpful to instructors of business communication courses who teach sections geared for accounting students. The manual is divided into four main parts: I. An introduction that should be useful for everyone. Included in Part I are such topics as how to motivate students and how to evaluate their writing. II. Approaches to teaching accounting communication: (1) Suggestions for accounting instructors who are integrating communication instruction into their accounting coursework, and (2) suggestions for teachers of accounting communication or business communication courses. III. Chapter commentaries, including teaching tips and solutions to exercises. IV. Masters for making handouts or slides. The suggestions and materials in the manual come from our many years of experience teaching accounting students. We hope that you find the manual helpful as you encourage your students to improve their writing, speaking, and higher order thinking skills. If you have any questions or suggestions, please let us know. You can reach us in care of : One Lake Street Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 If you would like to e- mail us directly, send your messages to the addresses below. We’d love to hear from you. With all best wishes, Gordon S. May gmay@mindspring.com Claire B. May c.may@mindspring.com

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    vi

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    1 PART I HELPING ACCOUNTING STUDENTS TO BECOME BETTER COMMUNICATORS  Motivating Students to Write Well  Qualities of Effective Writing  Evaluating Students’ Papers  Helping Students Improve

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    3 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 intermediate accounting, 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 questi on of students’ attitudes toward their writing deserves a closer look.

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    4 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 discusses the importance of writing and other soft skills to the successful practice of accounting. We can reinforce what 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 th ey’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 a bout 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

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    5 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 provides 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  1 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. 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. Content: 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. The act of writing can show the writer (and the instructor) what is understood and what is still unclear.

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    6 2. Critical Thinking: Using higher order thinking skills, 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 improve their higher order thinking skills. 3. Appropriateness for Intended Audience: 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.

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    7 4. Conciseness: Write as concisely as possible, given the re ader’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 maxim um length. Then they’ll be forced to say what is really important without excess words, sentences, or pages. 5. Clarity: 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 are students whose writing is awkward or unclear because they lack an adequate vocabulary or other basic verbal or English language 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 deficie ncies, 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.

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    8 6. Coherence: 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. 1 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. 1 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.

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    9 7. Revision: 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 c orrect 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 are 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 d on’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. Some grammatical errors are more distracting than others. Our emphasis should be on the errors that seriously interfere with reading. This is 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 a re educated readers, so they’re fully qualified to decide whether their students’ writing is acceptable. Let’s turn now to a more complete discussion of how to evaluate students’ papers. EVALUATING STUDENTS’ PAPERS The next few pages first discuss ba sic approaches to evaluating students’ writing and then look at two specific scoring methodologies you can use with your classes. 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.

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    10 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 preferred 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 review the chapter on Standard English. 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 cour se, 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

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