Assessment 1: Memo and letter

For this assessment you will need to:

• Write a memo to staff in your accounting firm
• Draft a letter to the accounting firm's clients

You will need to cite references in this assignment. This page is designed to assist you with using the Library to find references. Consult your Course Outline for more information about the assessment requirements.

Before you start searching, think of some keywords related to your topic. Here are a few examples to get you started:

• accounting standards
• client communication
• lobbying
• CPA

Use these tips to turn your keywords into a search term:

• Add quotation marks around words that need to be kept together, e.g., "accounting standards"
• Connect and combine search keywords using AND, OR, and NOT
• Use an asterisk * to find alternate word endings. For example, account*, which will find accounting, accountants, etc.

Then try your search in the Library Collection.

You may have to mix and match terms!

Here are examples of searches you can use in the catalogue:

From your results, your can then use the filters on the left to limit the results by date or choose certain formats.

More help

You may want to find articles in professional magazines. You can access some of these online:

Using Harvard Business Review

It is recommended to access the Harvard Business Review journal through Business Source Ultimate database. To search for articles on specific topics within the journal, click the 'Search within this publication' link and on the search page, enter the title or keywords starting from the second row.

Note: leave the first row as it is.

Once you have found some resources, you will need to evaluate if they are appropriate and if they are from a credible source.

Watch the following video (3 min 17 sec) for more information on evaluating resources.

Critical thinking is an essential part of taking a scholarly approach to learning. It involves analysing and questioning information you receive to arrive at logical, well-reasoned conclusions.

The following resources will assist you in understanding and developing your critical thinking and analysing skills needed for your assignment.

These resources have advice for writing memos and letters:

Here are some resources for general writing skills:

If you have questions about the assessment, you should post these to the course Discussion Forum. Other help options are listed in the Accounting guide.

Managing your references

What do you do with all those references you have found? You can use a bibliographic management software to store, organise, and cite your references.

There are many free systems available. The Library supports the bibliographic management tool EndNote. EndNote automates citing your references and allows you to create and organise a library of references. For more information and to download the software, check out the EndNote Guide: