Teaching finance through writing

✍ Scribed by Dean Drenk

• Book ID: 104601657
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 266 KB
• Volume: 1982
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0271-0633
• DOI: 10.1002/tl.37219821208

✦ Synopsis

Teaching subject matter through writing assignments can create problm, but such work will aLro heighten s~udenl~' !earning.

Teaching Finance Through Writing Dean Drenk

The Agony For professors and their students outside the English department, student writing assignments are a pain. Writing assignments take an extraordinary amount of time to design properly. Then, they must be graded. Students' writing exposes the weaknesses in their learning. Requiring writing places the professor and the student in direct confrontation, with the emotions of each disturbed by the personal frustrations and insecurities of the other. Thus, assigning written work in the business areas can be painful to the professor.

As an example, let me relate an incident that happened recently. Friday, the last day of exam week, began with a conference with one of my students. (I confer with each of my students at the end of the course.) This particular person was not happy with her grade, which was based largely on her written work. It was obvious to her that it was my fault. She said that I had not graded her written assignments correctly. Writing was not the proper thing to have students do in a finance courseall the students agreed. I had not motivated her. I had not taught her finance. As we sat in my office at 8:05 A.M., she expounded emphatically on these points, her voice rising to a shout. Not