To teach effective business communication, instructors must target students’ current weaknesses in writing. One method for doing so is by assigning writing exercises. When used heuristically, writing exercises encourage students to practice self-assessment, self-evaluation, active learning, and knowledge transfer, all while reinforcing the basics…

Assurance of learning continues to be a hot topic in higher education. Both accreditation agencies and employers are asking a key question: Are we graduating students who actually have the knowledge and skills that we promise? This case study focuses on business writing in an MBA program and presents a prescriptive, five-step program to improve…

This article summarizes a dissertation study designed to determine the effectiveness of instructional interventions that focus on proofreading and editing skills of first-year college students enrolled in business communication courses. The study used a pretest-posttest quasiexperimental control group design and collected data from 56 participants…

Two types of sentence-level writing problems are often observed in student writing: (1) those that violate conventions of standard written English, such as subject-verb agreement errors and comma splices; and (2) those that involve a stylistic choice, such as beginning a sentence with an expletive structure like "There are" or using "if" rather…

Describes a writing assignment in a business communication class in which students, in previously designated study groups, discover for themselves the complex interaction between a writer and an audience by becoming the president, vice president, and manager of operations of a company, and solve a problem that they can handle only through memos.…

Describes how a specific online program, the Online Writing Laboratory (OWL) of Purdue University, aids the teaching of writing. (SR)

Explores whether instruction in writing style at the word and sentence level leads to improvements in the quality of students' writing in a business-communication class. Finds that informative memos written after instruction were of higher quality than those written before instruction, with students' styles changing for the better after…

This article presents the results of a study where business students' writing skills were assessed using an external objective measure in a business communication course. The student performance was disappointing before instructor intervention. After the intervention, student performance improved noticeably. The implications of the study are…

Describes a writing project in an honors business-communication class in which the student team became consultants to a health-care business, revising existing collection letters and creating new documents to meet the needs of both patients and insurance companies, in the process preparing proposals, reports, data analysis, and oral presentations.…

Considers how many students walk into the class with an array of technical communicating perspectives that open the door for practical experiences. Believes that a technical communicator employs the ethnographic process for the purpose of creating technical documents. Presents an ethnographic framed assignment that requires a collaboratively…

Describes how the Business Writing Center, within the business school of Emory University, serves remedial and advanced students, provides much-needed assistance for international students, and fosters linkage with liberal arts programs. (SR)

Surveys instructors and students regarding what they believe students learn and what writing skills they improve by completing business report writing assignments. Finds that business communication instructors reported greater improvement in students' skills than students reported for themselves. Offers four guidelines for closing this gap.…

Presents a colloquium (based on exchange of opinions on the "Bizcom" listserv on the Internet) that explores the concept of writing well. Illustrates the influence of electronic mediation on the communication process. (SR)

Examines nine of the most widely accepted tenants of composition theory to derive approaches for teaching business communication. Discusses grammar, correcting, positive feedback, evaluation and written comments, quality versus quantity, self-evaluation, reading, planning and prewriting, and active involvement. (SR)

Presents a matrix for writing business memos and describes how it helps students organize memos that are logically complete, internally consistent, and coherent. (SR)