Avoiding Common Errors in Writing for Commerce Classes
A Hands-On Learning Tool for Students
CLICK HERE TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING!
Why this learning tool is important...
How we created this learning tool...
What this learning tool contains...
Why this learning tool is important...
One of the most important sets of abilities any student can acquire and develop in college is writing. No matter what your undergraduate major is or what field you plan to enter after you graduate, if you can write clearly, effectively, and correctly, you stand a much better chance of landing a good position and advancing in your profession. This is particularly true in the fields for which the College of Commerce prepares its students. To be sure, accountants, bankers, economists, managers, marketers, and real estate professionals deal with theories, concepts, figures, and formulas, but they actually do their work by writing—letters, reports, plans, proposals, and so on. In addition, the higher they rise and the more successful they become in their fields, the more these professionals have to write. Writing well is truly your key to success.
Learning to write in your major can be difficult. Not only are you experiencing substantial amounts of new, challenging material but you are also producing types of writing you may have never encountered before. When these two elements—challenging new content and complex writing tasks—meet head-on, student writers can encounter what might be termed "circuit overload." You are doing so much tough, unfamiliar work that your writing begins to show patterns of error that grow out of the stress.
How we created this learning tool...
To help students in DePaul’s College of Commerce understand how error-filled writing can cause problems for them, as well as how to avoid the kinds of errors that occasionally crop up in Commerce papers, we conducted a study with Commerce faculty this year. We asked six professors to show us two papers in their class that represented "no problems" in terms of error, two papers that were so troubled by error that they were "not acceptable," and two papers that fell someplace in between these two extremes. We then took nine passages or sentences that the professors considered "unacceptable" in terms of error, and we asked the professors to explain to us why the passages or sentences were unacceptable and what kind of revisions would make them acceptable in papers for their classes.
What this learning tool contains...
In the remainder of this document, we show you these nine passages or sentences. We highlight the problematic sections of each one, providing a link to the relevant section of the St. Martin’s Handbook, the guidebook that all DePaul students use in First-Year Writing Courses and should keep throughout their college years. We also show you the revision of the passage or sentence that the Commerce professors recommended. Click the link below to use the document.
CLICK HERE TO IMPROVE YOUR WRITING!