Teaching First-Year Business Students to Summarize: Abstract Writing Assignment (My Favorite Assignment‪)‬

TODAY'S BUSINESSES generate large quantities of information, making it increasingly important for managers to summarize much of that information so that busy executives can learn about important issues quickly. While the ability to summarize is key to business survival, studies show that few people know how to summarize well (Hill, 1991; Ratteary, 1989). This article discusses the effectiveness of an initiative designed to teach first-year business students to summarize, or abstract, what they have read. The abstract writing initiative is part of a comprehensive writing plan developed for a first-year business course called Gateway to Business. In this article, we briefly describe the course and writing plan as context for describing our approach to teaching students to summarize, our abstract writing assignment, and our assessment of its effectiveness. Gateway to Business Course and Writing Plan