Vocabulary Knowledge and the Overall Report Writing Quality

Vocabulary knowledge is considered to be sacrosanct to the attainment of effective written communication, particularly at the tertiary level where writing is the dominant skill used by the instructors in assessing students’ performance. However, limited vocabulary knowledge couple with ineffective writing quality have been the challenge of most ESL learners. The book examines the productive vocabulary knowledge and the overall quality of business report writing at the College of Business University Utara Malaysia. Data were obtained through writing task in which the respondents were given an hour within which to write an informational report. The essays were analyzed by using Vocab Profiler (Cobb, 2002) and marked by independent examiners by using Report Writing Rubric (Language Centre, UUM). SPSS was also employed for the descriptive statistics and correlation. The findings provide valuable insight into the vocabulary knowledge of business students and the way forward in achieving effective business report writing.