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.