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

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CLASS NOTESEFFECTIVE WRITING:A Handbookfor AccountantsEleventh EditionClaire B. May, Ph.D.Gordon S. May, Ph.D., CPAUniversity of Georgia, Emeritus

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iiiTABLE OF CONTENTSPART I HELPING ACCOUNTING STUDENTS TO BECOMEBETTER COMMUNICATORS ............................................................1Motivating Students to Write Well .............................................................................4Qualities of Effective Writing.....................................................................................5Evaluating Students’ Papers.......................................................................................9Helping Students Improve ........................................................................................13PART II COMMUNICATION INSTRUCTION INTEGRATEDINTO AN ACCOUNTING COURSE .................................................17Writing Assignments ................................................................................................19Oral Communication Skills ......................................................................................22Interpersonal Skills ...................................................................................................23Assigning Chapters inEffective Writing...................................................................25PART III ACCOUNTING COMMUNICATION COURSES ........27Planning the Course ..................................................................................................29Planning Classroom Activities..................................................................................29Inviting Guest Speakers to Your Class .....................................................................30Writing with Precision About Accounting ...............................................................30Course Outline ..........................................................................................................31PART IV CHAPTER COMMENTARIES........................................33Chapter1 Accountants as Communicators ............................................................35Chapter2 The Writing Process: An Overview .....................................................37Chapter3 Coherent Writing: Organizing Business Documents ............................43Chapter4 A Sense of Style: Writing with Conciseness and Clarity .....................47Chapter5 Standard English: Grammar, Punctuation, and Spelling ......................53Chapter6 Format for Clarity: Document Design..................................................61Chapter7 Thinking on the Job: Higher Order Thinking Skills..............................63Chapter8 Accounting Research.............................................................................65Chapter9 Letters ....................................................................................................69

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

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vTo the users of this manual:This manual was written for teachers who want to help their accounting students to becomebetter communicators. As a supplement toEffective Writing: A Handbook for Accountants, 11thed., 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 toinstructors of business communication courses who teach sections geared for accountingstudents.The manual is divided into four main parts:I. An introduction that should be useful for everyone. Included in Part I are such topicsas how to motivate students and how to evaluate their writing.II. Approaches to teaching accounting communication: (1) Suggestions for accountinginstructors who are integrating communication instruction into their accountingcoursework, and (2) suggestions for teachers of accounting communication or businesscommunication 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 teachingaccounting students. We hope that you find the manual helpful as you encourage your studentsto 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 StreetUpper Saddle River, NJ 07458If you would like to e-mail us directly, send your messages to the addresses below. We’d love tohear from you.With all best wishes,Gordon S. Maygmay@mindspring.comClaire B. Mayc.may@mindspring.com

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1PART IHELPING ACCOUNTING STUDENTS TO BECOMEBETTER COMMUNICATORSMotivating Students to Write WellQualities of Effective WritingEvaluating Students’ PapersHelping Students Improve

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3HELPING ACCOUNTING STUDENTS TO BECOMEBETTER COMMUNICATORSAccounting students need to be effective communicators if they are to succeed in theircareers, yet many of them lack the communication skills they need. Our own classroomexperiences have made us aware of their deficiencies, as have comments we hear from theprofessionals who hire them after graduation. Almost everyone in the field would agree thatthere 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 wouldalready know how to write. Actually, research has shown that the causes of the poor writingskills we see are complex, and blaming any one group of people or any one institutionoversimplifies the situation. (If we need scapegoats, television, video games, and social mediaare probably as good as any.) But whatever the causes of their poor writing, our students stillneed help, and they need it now.Another way to look at this dilemma, however, is the unique opportunity we have to helpaccounting students to become better writers (and speakers)about accounting. Writing withprecision and clarity about accounting topics can best be taught within the context of anaccounting class, whether this class is a regular accounting course like principles or intermediateaccounting, 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 documentsthey’ll encounter in practice. They will thus gain practical experience and a chance to buildusable, job-related skills.The second advantage is that students are likely to find the writing assignments we give themmeaningful, since they can see the connection between the assignments and job requirements. Ifthey find the assignments relevant to future job success, they may be motivated to do their bestwork and to improve areas where they’re weak.This question of students’ attitudes toward their writing deserves a closer look.

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4MOTIVATING STUDENTS TO WRITE WELLIf students are to improve their communication skills, they must be convinced that they willneed these skills to succeed in their careers. Our first task, then, is to convince them thatcommunication skills are indeed important.There are several ways to convince them. The first chapter ofEffective Writingdiscusses theimportance of writing and other soft skills to the successful practice of accounting. We canreinforce what students read inEffective Writingby giving them opportunities to hear firsthandabout the importance of writing skills on the job. We can share our own professionalexperiences, and we can invite speakers into the classroom to talk about the kinds of documentsentry-level accountants are expected to write. Accountants in practice make good speakers, bothrecent graduates and well-established, successful professionals.Even after students are convinced that they need to be good writers, however, there still maybe other attitude problems we need to be aware of. Many students dislike writing, and they mayeven be afraid to write for fear of failure. These negative attitudes probably result from badexperiences they’ve had in other courses, especially courses where they’ve received too muchnegative feedback on their papers.It is possible to help students overcome these self-defeating attitudes. One way is torecognize and reward what they do reasonably well, a strategy discussed in later sections of thismanual. Another way to give them a better attitude about their writing is to stress two attributesof the writing they’ll do in our courses: They’ll be writingabout accounting, which they both understand and find interesting.Papers written about accounting topics should be easier for them than, say, an analysis ofa poem or a research paper for a history course. It’s always easier to write on a subject wefeel comfortable with. Documents written for business, such as memos and letters, should be both simple anddirect. Many students will find this type of writing easier than the elaborate rhetoricalstyles encouraged in some disciplines.Yet another way to overcome students’ negative attitudes about writing is to emphasizepositive rather than negative feedback on their writing. One approach is to give them either agood grade (perhaps a C or better) or no grade at all; papers receiving no grade are then reviseduntil they merit a decent grade (perhaps up to a C). Later sections of this manual will discuss thisstrategy further.In truth, many students are capable of writing better than they think they can, or than they aresometimes willing to show us. The key is motivating them to put out their best effort, instead ofjust the minimum needed to get by. They also must be willing to work hard to improve the areaswhere they are weak. We can motivate our students to improve their writing skills, then, by

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5convincing them that they need these skills for professional success, and by giving them theencouragement they need to overcome their anxieties.Another way to motivate students is to assign papers that simulate the kinds of documentsthey will write on the job. The assignments inEffective Writingresemble writing done byaccounting 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 inaccounting coursework. The next part of the manual provides suggestions on how to design yourown assignments.QUALITIES OF EFFECTIVE WRITINGIf our students are to write effectively on the job, it makes sense that we stress the qualities ofeffective business writing in our assignments. Figure 11 in the text summarizes the qualitiesthey should strive for in their writing; we should then stress these same criteria when we evaluatetheir papers.Let’s look at problems students may have incorporating these qualities into theirwriting andhow we can evaluate papers based on these criteria.1.Content:Be sure that the accounting content is correct and complete. Have youaddressed all relevant accounting issues?This criterion of effective writing means that the writer has fully analyzed the assignmentand has met the requirements for content. There is often a strong correlation between a writer’sunderstanding of accounting content and the effectiveness of the writing, but this relationshipmay not be apparent at first glance. In fact, a paper may be labeled as poorly written when thereal problem is that the writer didn’t understand the material being discussed. After all, no onecan 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. Alltoo often they have learned through experience that the “shotgun approach” may work well onessay exams and other assigned writing projects. Using this approach, students will writesentences that vaguely address the issues in the assignment, inserting the correct buzzwords atregular intervals. This strategy may work if busy instructors don’t have the time to read thestudents’ responses carefully.If we insist that students address the issues clearly and completely, our students will not onlybecome better writers, but they’ll also improve their mastery of the accounting concepts aboutwhich they are writing. The act of writing can show the writer (and the instructor) what isunderstood and what is still unclear.

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62.Critical Thinking:Using higher order thinking skills, think carefully and criticallyabout the issues with which you’re dealing. Anticipate questions and objections yourreaders may raise.As experienced accountants know, sometimes the solution to an accounting problem may notbe immediately obvious. In fact, sometimes an accounting problem may have more than oneplausible solution. These gray areas in accounting issues will challenge students to thinkcritically.Students looking for quick answers to accounting questions may not be prepared for theresearch and thinking necessary to evaluate alternative approaches. You can help them learnthese skills by discussing complex cases in class, illustrating how the issues may be regardedfrom multiple perspectives. You might also have students discuss cases in small groups. Oftendifferent students will suggest several solutions to a problem. They will learn to think critically ifthey argue for and against the different solutions. The group might finally reach a consensus onthe preferred solutions, or it might acknowledge that a good argument could be made for morethan one approach.Another problem may arise when students write memos, letters, or reports to a hypotheticalclient. Especially if their recommended solution will be controversial, they may not realize theimportance of anticipating the client’s questions and objections. Sometimes students believe theyshould provide only reasons for their recommended solution, but they should also acknowledgeand respond to anticipated objections of the reader. Remind students that they will appear morecredible if they show that they have researched the issues thoroughly, considered them from allperspectives, 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 inmind. Check that issues are discussed on a level that the reader can understand. Formost documents, it’s better to focus on practical, explicit advice related to the case youare discussing, rather than general accounting theory.Unless they have had previous courses in business communication or technical writing, moststudents will never have thought about the importance of reader analysis. Rather, all their paperswill be targeted to the course instructor as the primary reader. If they are to become effectivewriters, however, they need to think about the needs and interests of different readers and plantheir papers accordingly. This criterion of effective writing is particularly important foraccountants, since the readers they encounter have a wide variety of interests and expertise inaccounting.Once they start thinking about their readers’ needs, most students can adjust the technicallevel and style of their documents so that they are appropriate. A bigger challenge for some ofthem is to write concrete advice for the situation identified in the assignment. The focus of theirpapers should be on practical, context-specific applications of accounting concepts, rather thanabstract generalizations.

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74.Conciseness:Write as concisely as possible, given the reader’s needs and the issues tobe 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 areused to writing papers that must have a minimum number of pages in order to be acceptable, andmany of them will pad their papers to get this minimum length. Of course, instructors whoassign 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 thisrequirement to mean that more is better.We may have better luck teaching our students to be concise if we require papers to beundera certain maximum length. Then they’ll be forced to say what is really important without excesswords, sentences, or pages.5.Clarity:Develop a style that is clear and readable. Choose words that the reader willunderstand, and construct sentences that convey your meaning with precision andclarity.One way to help students write with clarity is to remind them that effective business writingis simple and direct: relatively short (but not choppy) sentences and word choices that are asfamiliar as possible, given the need to write with precision. This advice will help those studentswho believe that writing should be composed of long, complex sentences and esotericvocabulary. It will also be a corrective for those older, more experienced students who havegrownaccustomed to the turgid prose style often called “officialese.”Harder to help are students whose writing is awkward or unclear because they lack anadequate vocabulary or other basic verbal or English language skills. These are the students whodon’thandle language comfortably: word choices are not precise or idiomatic, and sentencestructures are not clear and readable.Causes of these problems are complex and vary from student to student. One possible causemight be that these students have not read sufficiently over their lifetimes and, thus, have notbuilt up a fluency with the language. English may be a second language for some of them, thuscausing potential difficulties.We can’t always identify the causes of students’ serious verbal deficiencies, but we can helpthem improve. We can give them opportunities to write as often as possible and show them thepassages in their papers where they have not used the best word choices or where their sentencestructures 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 thecriteria of effective business writing. What they need most is feedback on their writing andsufficient opportunities to write and revise.

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86.Coherence:Structure the document so that it is coherent. The organization should belogical and the train of thought easy to follow. Summarize main ideas near thebeginning of the document, and begin each paragraph with a topic sentence.Students’ ability to organize a document coherently depends on their previous training incomposition and their ability to think logically. If they have trouble with organization, thesuggestions in Chapters 2 and 3 of the text should help them progress. Even for those studentswho understand the principles of organization, two qualities of business writing may presentchallenges.First, paragraphs in business writing are typically shorter than the paragraphs in other types ofprose. In composition classes, for example, students may have been encouraged to writeparagraphs of up to 150 words. In business writing, the recommended length for paragraphs isgenerally a maximum of four or five sentences.The other problem students may have with the organization of business documents is learningto write with a deductive arrangement of ideas. With a deductive organization, conclusions andmain ideas are stated first, followed by the support. Thus, we encourage students to summarizetheir conclusions near the beginning of their documents, to begin each section of a documentwith a statement of the main idea being developed, and to begin each paragraph with a strongtopic sentence.Most students will have learned the principles of paragraph organization, including the use oftopic sentences. Yet even the best writers may have trouble with an overall deductiveorganization of a document: stating the conclusions before the support. Most students want totake their readers through the same inductive process of gathering and analyzing data that theywent through to derive the conclusions.1Thus, they may write introductions like this one:This memo will compare LIFO and FIFO and then identify the inventory flow assumption thatis best for your company.The readers of this memo might not learn what the writer recommends until the last part ofthe paper. A better statement might be something like this:While both LIFO and FIFO offer certain advantages, the nature of your inventory makes FIFOthe better choice for your company.One way to help students write deductively is to insist that they summarize their conclusionsor main ideas at the beginning of the document, in the introduction or executive summary, forexample.1We have used the terms “deductive” and “inductive” here in a rhetorical sense, which at times may appear to beinconsistent with the waythese terms are used in philosophy and empirical research. By “deductive” we meansimply 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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97.Revision:Revise the document so that it is polished and professional. It should be freeof all spelling errors and typos; grammatical errors should not detract from themessage.When some people talk about “effective writing,” all they have in mind is correct grammarand mechanics: “good English.” But effectively written documents involve a number ofdimensions. In the summary of effective writing criteria we are discussing here, correct grammarand mechanics appear in only one of seven guidelines.We realize that students must write with Standard English if they are to be successful in theaccounting profession. Glaring grammatical, mechanical, or typographical errors make the writerseem either poorly educated or careless. Yet some accounting instructors may feel unsure aboutevaluating students’ papers for Standard English usage.How to evaluate students’ papers and help them overcome their writing deficiencies arediscussed further in later sections of this manual. But for now, let’s emphasizeone importantpoint: grammatical, mechanical, and typographical errors should not distract the reader. Whenyou 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 ofthe 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 theerrors that seriously interfere with reading.This is why accounting instructors make goodevaluators of students’ English usage: If a troubling word or passage bothers you, mark it on thestudent’s paper. If you don’t think the problem is particularly distracting, then it’s probably notimportant 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 theirstudents’ writing is acceptable.Let’s turn now to a more complete discussion of how to evaluate students’ papers.EVALUATING STUDENTS’ PAPERSThe next few pages first discuss basic approaches to evaluating students’ writing and thenlook at two specific scoring methodologies you can use with your classes.Evaluation StrategiesEvaluations of students’ papers can be a way to help them improve their writing. When youevaluate their papers, keep these general guidelines in mind.

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10Use the criteria of effective business writing as the basis of your evaluation. Keeping thesecriteria in mind will help you give your students constructive suggestions for improving theirwriting: what they do well and where they need to improve. Moreover, if they know in advancewhat criteria you’ll use as the basis of your evaluations, they’ll be much more likely to write inthe desired way.Use your evaluations as a way to help students learn. Evaluating students’ papers can helpthem improve their writing if we regard evaluation as more than marking mistakes and taking offpoints. We’ll help students learn if we identify their strengths as well as their weaknesses andgive them opportunities to revise their writing to make it more effective.Comment constructively. Comment when students do something well. Research ineducational psychology has shown conclusively that most students learn best when they are givenmore positive than negative feedback. In other words, they need to know when they dosomething right.As a practical matter, it’s often easier to identify students’ errors than to identify what they doreasonably well. It’s tempting to say, “If I don’t mark it wrong, you can assume it’s okay.” Butstudents need positive feedback for at least two reasons. First, they may not realize thatsomething they’re doing is the preferred way. Identifying their strengths helps to ensure that theycontinue writing in that way. Moreover, when we praise students for what they do well, we maygive 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. Forexample, 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, aparagraph that is hard to follow, or a poor choice of words. You can also comment on qualitiesof the paper as a whole. For example, you could praise a paper for being concise or readable, oryou might suggest that the writer review the chapter on Standard English.Encourage revisions. Another way to help students improve their writing is to give themopportunities to revise. When students don’t write as well as we think they are capable ofwriting, we’ll help them learn if we ask them to revise their papers according to the suggestionswe’ve made in the margins. These suggestions would, of course, be in line with the criteria ofeffective business writing.Revisions can be handled several ways. If time permits, you might review students’ paperswhile they are still in the draft stages. The students would then revise their papers according toyour suggestions as they prepare the final draft. If you have small classes, you might review allthe drafts, but a more practical plan for large classes would be to focus your attention on thestudents with the greatest problems.Alternatively, you could ask for a revision of certain papers after you have evaluated a set offinal drafts. You could ask students to revise if their papers are clearly substandard, or if the

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