Written Communication Apprehension Experienced by First-Year Undergraduate Accounting Students

Last month I gave a virtual conference presentation at the 17th IATED Conference in Valencia, Spain. The topic was written communication apprehension experienced by accounting students. It focussed on essay writing by the students in their first few weeks at university.

Most previous research has been quantitative, using versions of the Daly and Miller Written Communication Apprehension (WCA) questionnaire. I also use a version, the adaptation by Hassall et al 2000, in this research to assess overall WCA but the main purpose of the study was to analyse the reasons for apprehension given by students in reflections that they wrote immediately after the essay tasks were completed.

The questionnaire data shows that there is a small fall in the average apprehension felt by each of the three cohorts towards writing during their first year of study at university. However, for each cohort the highest score, indicating the highest apprehension, increased, meaning that for some apprehension felt towards writing had risen.

The analysis of the reflections showed that five labels made up two-thirds of the reasons given for apprehension  in the essay writing activities. These were ‘Feeling of inadequate skills development' (26.3% of all instances), ‘Confusion: task' (14.37%), ‘Poor organisation or time management' (12.23%),  'Novelty' (10.4%) and ‘Confusion: content’ (8.26%). Three-quarters of ‘Feeling of inadequate skills development' referred to either concern over writing or reading, with many focussing on the need to find and report sources as raising their levels of apprehension. The feeling of inadequate preparedness for writing at university is a theme which reappears regularly in reflections carrying different labels.

While overseas students need to satisfy institutions that they are able to write appropriately before starting courses, no such requirements exist for home students. The introduction of the Extended Project Qualification helps many students prepare for writing at university but it is not a requirement.  Furthermore, there is some evidence that the way writing tasks are presented to students may cause some to become apprehensive. 

The full paper has been published in the INTED 2023 conference proceedings: 

Ireland, C. (2023) Written Communication Apprehension Experienced by First-Year Undergraduate Accounting Students. In 17th Annual International Technology, Education and Development. Valencia, Spain. doi: 10.21125/inted.2023.0322


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