Article Review: You Can Lead a Horse to Water but You Can’t Make Him Edit

Article Review
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Article Review
Introduction
Writing skills are fundamental in academic accomplishments. However, research raises a critical concern regarding high school graduates’ basic writing skills and abilities. Wilson et al. (2018) claim these students lack writing competence, which is why they are typically required to complete several compositions in their first year in college. Employers have brought further attention to the issue, highlighting that business students lack basic writing skills. Consequently, this study evaluates whether issuing adequate feedback to business students in their coursework about their writing mechanics can improve their competence.
Research Problem and Question
Business communication skills, including interpersonal, nonverbal, verbal, written, and presentation competence, are essential for success. In addition, employees must show business etiquette and effectively use digital communication tools and communication channels such as emails to achieve their objectives. Unfortunately, of all these skills, written communication is the most challenging for business college graduates. Wilson et al. (2018) ask, “As most business students are already doing written assignments in their upper-division coursework, can feedback about writing mechanics in this coursework effectively increase business students’ skill levels in grammar?” This research question directs their inquiry throughout the article.
Methodology
The study involved a sample from a rural, western university comprising 96 business majors and college junior or senior students. Wilson et al. (2018) assessed these participants’ previous writing experience, attitudes, and behaviors via anonymous surveys. Of the total 96 surveys administered, there were 71 usable surveys returned. The participants were required to indicate their feedback on various questions regarding their attitudes about their writing skills on a Likert scale, with one showing they strongly agree, two agree, three neither agree nor disagree, four disagree, and five strongly disagree (Wilson et al., 2018). For instance, the survey prompted them to conduct a self-evaluation of their confidence in their writing abilities, difficulty expressing themselves in writing, confidence in defending their written stances, and capacity to concentrate while writing, among others.
The researchers utilized a pretreatment assessment research method to collect data, which is a quasi-experimental design. The participants were given two applied writing assignments to complete, from which their writing mechanics were evaluated. Wilson et al. (2018) focused on checking spelling errors...