Issue date: 2/4/08 Section: News

The College of Business Administration has boosted efforts to perfect business students' writing, opening a writing center. ORACLE PHOTO/LENA GOSIK

Business schools around the nation are learning that bad writing equals bad business. So it's no wonder that universities nationwide have begun to establish writing centers for their business students.

USF is no different.

Under the direction of Patricia Nickinson, the recently opened College of Business Administration's (COBA) Business Communications Center aims to fix bad writing and help business students determine the requirements of assignments; organize information; express their ideas clearly, logically and concisely; and fine-tune their grammar and punctuation, according to Nickinson.

COBA's writing center is modeled after a similar business-oriented writing center at the University of Iowa.

Although there is already a writing center on campus, Nickinson believes there should be a separate center for business students. This center would be more familiar with business assignments and business documents that would be used in the real world, she said.

Some business concentrations require public speaking and professional writing classes, but these classes often cover only the basics and cannot give each student the direct feedback that the tutors at the Business Communication Center would be able to give, Nickinson said.

College of Business Dean Robert Forsythe said that the official name of the Business Communications Center signifies its purpose of offering aid for other aspects of business courses­ - for example, by helping with presentations.

The Center doesn't want to simply edit assignments for business students. Although the task of working through each assignment by asking each writer what could be done better can be tedious and laborious, the students will learn how to evaluate their own work through this process, taking these skills through the class, graduation, and into their career.

"It's got to be the writer making choices," Nickinson said.

Tutors can train students with that power of choice to strengthen their own papers, she said.

Most business students, Nickinson observes, tend to write with a lot of what she described as "generalities and vagueness," which prohibits them from conveying the clearest possible message with the least amount of words. The main differences between academic and business writing are the audience and the purpose. Professors, who compose academic writing's typical audience, can expect to be familiar with the information coming in a report, while the recipients of a memo in the business world are often receiving entirely new information.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools