GB700 Unit 7 Scholarly Voice Exercise Example

Verbs That Match the Evidence: A Unit 7 Scholarly Voice Exercise on a Tuition Assistance Paragraph

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB700: Doctoral Studies in Business

Unit 7 Scholarly Voice Exercise

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The candidate and the draft paragraph are composite and illustrative; the studies and style sources cited are real.

The Paragraph as First Written

This paragraph opened the first draft of my literature review introduction. Each sentence is numbered for the annotations that follow.

(1) Research proves that tuition assistance reduces turnover by 40 percent. (2) Employees who earn degrees become more loyal to the company that paid for them. (3) Studies consistently show that education benefits pay for themselves. (4) Frontline workers value tuition benefits more than any other perk. (5) Therefore, the bank should expect its new program to transform retention.

Annotations, Sentence by Sentence

Sentence 1. Claim as written: research proves a 40 percent reduction. Evidence available: a vendor's report from one employer (Tier 4) and refereed studies finding lower turnover among participants during enrollment (Benson et al., 2004; Manchester, 2012). What is wrong: verb strength, since research in this area does not prove; scope, since the figure comes from one vendor study; and source, since no citation is given. Revision: "Employees enrolled in tuition programs have been found less likely to leave while they study (Benson et al., 2004), although part of this pattern reflects who chooses to enroll (Manchester, 2012)."

Sentence 2. Claim: graduates become more loyal. Evidence: the same 2004 study found that graduates who were not promoted became more likely to leave. What is wrong: the claim contradicts the strongest available source. Revision: "Graduates appear less likely to stay unless they are promoted (Benson et al., 2004)."

Sentence 3. Claim: studies consistently show programs pay for themselves. Evidence: return-on-investment figures appear mainly in vendor reports; refereed studies rarely measure cost and return together. What is wrong: "consistently" overstates a thin and interested literature, and "pay for themselves" is a financial claim most studies did not test. This is the hardest row, because the vendor figures may be accurate for the employers studied. Revision: "Several vendor-sponsored studies report returns exceeding program costs; refereed estimates of return are scarce."

Sentence 4. Claim: frontline workers value tuition above all perks. Evidence: consultancy surveys of stated preferences, mostly of salaried employees. What is wrong: scope, since the surveys did not sample frontline workers, and measurement, since stated preference is not behavior. Revision: "Surveys suggest many employees say they value education benefits, though few of those surveys include frontline staff."

Sentence 5. Claim: the bank should expect transformation. Evidence: none directly. What is wrong: the conclusion outruns every premise above it. Revision: "Whether a prepaid program would change retention among the bank's frontline staff is an open question."

Where a Strong Verb Survives

Not every claim needs softening. The finding that turnover was lower among participants during enrollment appears in the strongest refereed study and is consistent with others, so within its scope it can be stated plainly: participants were less likely to leave. Hyland (1998) found that skilled academic writers hedge selectively, committing firmly where evidence is strong and qualifying where it is not. Uniform hedging misleads as much as uniform confidence, because it hides which claims the writer actually trusts.

What the Exercise Taught About My Habits

Three habits produced most of the errors. I used verbs like proves and shows when the evidence was correlational. I generalized from salaried employees to frontline staff without noticing the shift. And I cited vendor figures with the same confidence as refereed findings. Each habit came from writing for a board, where confidence persuades and qualifications look like weakness. Writing for a field requires the reverse instinct: the reader trusts a writer who marks clearly where the evidence stops.

The Overcorrected Middle Draft

My second draft went too far:

"Research may possibly suggest that tuition assistance might be associated with somewhat lower turnover in some cases, although it could perhaps also be that graduates may sometimes be more likely to leave, and education benefits might potentially offer some return."

Every claim now carries two or three qualifiers. A reader cannot tell which findings are well supported and which are speculative. Swales and Feak (2012) caution that excessive hedging makes a writer sound unsure of everything, which is as unhelpful as sounding sure of everything.

Stacked qualifiers do not make a claim more careful; they make it impossible to tell which claims the writer trusts.

The Final Paragraph

Employees enrolled in employer tuition programs have been found less likely to leave while they study (Benson et al., 2004), although part of that pattern reflects which employees choose to enroll (Manchester, 2012). After graduation, the picture changes: graduates who were not promoted became more likely to leave. Vendor-sponsored studies report returns above program costs, but refereed estimates of return are scarce, and few studies include frontline employees. Whether a program that prepays degrees for the bank's tellers and operations staff would improve retention, and under what conditions, remains an open question.

References

Benson, G. S., Finegold, D., & Mohrman, S. A. (2004). You paid for the skills, now keep them: Tuition reimbursement and voluntary turnover. Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), 315-331. https://doi.org/10.5465/20159584

Hyland, K. (1998). Hedging in scientific research articles. John Benjamins.

Manchester, C. F. (2012). General human capital and employee mobility: How tuition reimbursement increases retention through sorting and participation. ILR Review, 65(4), 951-974. https://doi.org/10.1177/001979391206500408

Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2012). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills (3rd ed.). University of Michigan Press.