Oral and written communication apprehension in accounting students: Curriculum impacts and impacts on academic performance

Abstract

In the context of an accounting curriculum that has been significantly modified over the past decade in response to calls for skills development, this study investigates the impacts of curriculum on students' levels of communication apprehension. An emerging concern in accounting is that attempts made to improve students' communication skills may fail or be less effective for some students because such attempts do not improve, or may even exacerbate, students' anxiety about communicating, which in turn leads to poorer performance. The results from this New Zealand study show that students in their final year of study in which they are exposed to greater communication demands do not, on average, have higher levels of communication apprehension in earlier studies than their peers do. The levels of communication apprehension for final year students decline most markedly for those students starting with higher average levels of apprehension. The results fail to find any strong associations between levels of communication apprehension and students' abilities to advance in their studies or average levels of academic performance. One finding that opens up the possibility for further research, however, is that students' anxiety about communicating in interviews is not reduced.Communication apprehension, accounting education, New Zealand,

An Explanatory Mixed Method Study on Pre-Service Language Teachers' Communication Apprehension Towards Their Instructors

“…First, there were no gender differences relating to communication apprehension. The finding that there is no relationship between gender and CA is consistent with the outcomes of other empirical studies (Faris, Golen, & Lynch, 1999;Gardner et al, 2005) but inconsistent with other research that reports differences between females and males (Donovan and MacIntyre, 2004;Jaasma, 1997;Johnson & Faunce, 1973). The results of this study support the view that gender is not a significant factor in communication apprehension (Rosenfeld &Berko, 1990).…”

“…Volume 5, Issue 1, April 2017, p. 631-650 accounting undergraduate students in New Zealand, Gardner, Milne, Stringer, and Whiting (2005) reported significant differences for overall oral CA for students, with females being significantly higher. According to the results of a quantitative study carried out among international undergraduates enrolled in an English language course in Malyasian context, frequency of female respondents who achieved high overall CA scores outweighs male participants (Singh, David & Choo, 2012).…”

“…Fordham and Gabbin (1996) investigated how CA is related to student' year level and found that senior students had low levels of CA. Nonetheless, the study by Gardner et al (2005) focused on a cross-sectional investigation of CA of students and found no significant differences between the years of study for mean levels of overall oral CA. Likewise, Frantz et al (2005) examined the relationship between communication apprehension and year level among undergraduate students and did not find a significant difference.…”

Skills, learning styles and success of first-year undergraduates

“…For example, confidence in the long-term planning aspect of time management, though not daily planning, has been shown to be correlated with academic performance in first year at university (Trueman and Hartley, 1996). Similarly, lack of confidence in written communication skills has been 260 found to be correlated with poor performance on an accounting degree, though only in later years of the course and no such correlation was found in first year (Gardner et al, 2005). Lack of confidence in oral communication showed no consistent correlation with academic performance in any year.…”

Functional relevance of students’ prior knowledge and situational uncertainty during verbal interactions in vocational classrooms: evidence from a mixed-methods study

“…Stated differently, most studies focus on trait-like or generalised-context forms of communication apprehension-the former being an enduring, global disposition of a person, the latter generalised fears with regard to certain communication settings (Gardner et al 2005;McCroskey 2012). Furthermore, they face problems of common method variance, which can produce artificially inflated correlations (e.g., Howard and Baird 2000).…”