Improving Accounting Students’ Perceptions about the Importance of Writing

Abstract

In response to numerous calls from the accounting profession, many accounting
professors include writing assignments in their classes. Although there are
several articles that recommend how writing assignments can be integrated in
the accounting curriculum, there is no evidence on how these assignments might
affect students’ attitudes about the importance of communication skills. For
accounting students to heed attempts to improve their writing skills, they must
value proficiency in that area. The current study measures students’ perceptions
of the importance of writing, at the beginning and end of the semester in a cost
accounting course. Each of four groups of students were treated differently with
respect to how a particular writing assignment was administered. The only group
who demonstrated a significant increase in the perceived importance of writing
skills were students who completed one management summary (compared to
four summaries required of the other three groups), but were given two chances
to revise the summary after receiving their initial grade and extensive comments
from the instructor. The results indicate that to improve students’ motivation to
improve their writing skills, we should devote attention to the process of
improvement rather than just assigning more writing assignments in accounting
classes.