Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/54806
me provide details and summaries to students, teams, and the assessment committee. 2. In-class editing. Just before students turn in a writing assignment, I allocate five minutes of class time for them to check their work, exchange papers with classmates, and even ask me questions about writing issues. I don't take off any points if students make pencil corrections over their typed papers—even if they write "I am not sure about the subject and verb agreement here." This proactive, flexible process helps students more deeply value the critical process of edit- ing and rewriting. 8. Create rules, not suggestions. I've observed that students consider strong writing more important when I use specific language to describe my expectations. For instance, I talk about formal writing requirements rather than a style guide, which is actually the correct term. But more than a few students interpret style to mean fashion and guide to mean recommended, so I take out the ambiguity. In other instances, I use business terms to describe writing techniques. When I discuss how to measure waste in wordy sentences, I refer to it as sentence accounting. When I talk about writing rules, I pronounce them sentence laws. When I discuss how to remove chance in inter- pretation, I talk about sentence statistics. Although my terms are unorthodox, my students—all of them declared business majors—appear to grasp my intention intuitively. 9. Give out handbooks. At used-book sales held by local and university libraries, I frequently can find style guides, writing handbooks, and technical communication textbooks selling for $1 or less. I buy them and give them away to any student who wants one. If students decide to buy their own, I emphasize that the costs can be amortized over their academic and early professional careers. Five Forms of Feedback The second way I help business students improve their lan- guage skills is through ongoing feedback. I endorse a variety of methods: 1. A consistent rubric. I create a scoring rubric based on the major sections of a writing handbook. Students benefit from clear and consistent scoring, and I am better able to assess students' individual and team-based prog- ress. In addition, I've designed a spreadsheet that helps 48 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2011 3. Lenient error marking. I get the best results when I reduce points only for the first—or most significant—error of any specific type. I do mark additional errors of the same type, but I don't deduct points. This approach is less intimidating to the student, and I notice that all students improve. 4. Dual scoring. I score the content and writing of each assignment separately. From the content score, I deduct 10 percent for each major composition error. At first this policy appears severe, but by the end of the class, the composition and prose improve noticeably. My hypothesis is that a per- centage deduction grabs the students' attention early and focuses their improvement persistently. 5. Visits with the professor. I encourage students with weak writing scores to come see me in my office, where we can discuss each type of error, why it's important in the con- text of the assignment, and what tools and processes they can use to avoid similar mistakes in the future. As a method of positive reinforcement, I give them makeup points for com- ing in and working on continuous improvement through a face-to-face learning experience. Tools for the Future The cognitive processes associated with writing and criti- cal thinking are highly intertwined. Weak business writ- ers could be limiting their progression from students to professionals, professionals to managers, and managers to executives. If faculty help business students improve their writing, they're not just ensuring that students turn in more readable papers. They're helping graduates on their way to more successful careers. ■ z Wayne Smith is a lecturer in the department of management at the College of Business and Economics at California State University, Northridge.