THE RUSSIAN AUDITOR

A key to success in enginineering is an ability to understand the mechanisms of how business enterprises operate. It is especially important that you learn those concepts in terms that both you and your future audiences can understand and appreciate. The following true story provides an example.

During the early 1990s, I volunteered to teach a course called Technical English For Immigrant Russian Engineers, Scientists & Technicians as my way of thanking my grandparents for immigrating to the United States around 1900 - and, therefore, making it unnecessary for me to take such a course. The course was given at Ner Talmud Synagogue in Chicago's West Rogers Park neighborhood where many Russian Jewish immigrants had moved. Their most immediate need was to find work and restart their professional careers. My objective was to train these new arrivals in basic technical English, resumé writing and rudiments of American business corporations.

One of my students was Alexi, a young man in his early forties who had just arrived from Russia. There, he had been an auditor in a state-owned construction firm. Now in the United States, he was driving a taxicab and finding the American dream hard to achieve.

Just as C96ers are required to prepare, each of my Russian students had to submit each week an improved draft of his/her resumé. Alexi's first draft opened with Auditor who is expert about all aspects of accounting. My immediate response was to tell Alexi, that there was no factual support for such boasting and that Americans believed that Russians knew nothing at all about accounting because their country had become a bankrupt.

Alexi challenged me with an opportunity to prove that he was right and that he really was expert about all aspects of accounting. So, the next week I brought into class a copy of Accounting: The Language of Business - which is a dictionary of accounting and auditing terms. I told the class that I would pick one term from that book at random and then give the class five minutes to discuss the term amongst themselves and to agree upon a single definition. Then, they were to pick one of their number to recite that definition. I fanned the pages of the book and jabbed at it with my finger. My finger landed on the term common stock.

After their five minute discussion, Alexi stood up and recited the for the class the following definition:

In your next Weekly Progress Report, please include:

1. A paragraph in which you explain whether you agree or disagree with Alexi's definition and why.
2. If you disagree with Alexi, please provide your own definintion for the term common stock.
3. Please provide a reason for why a company might have common stock.
4. Do all businesses have or need common stock?
5. Are there any alternatives to common stock? If so, describe some of the alternatives.
6. Is there a generic noun used to describe or identify common stock and any alternatives? If so, please identify that noun. If there are classes or sub-classes, please list them.
7. What is a bankrupt?
8. Can a soverign country (i.e. The Soviet Union) become a bankrupt? Does your answer depend on whether a country has a socialist or a capitalist economy? Provide a rationale for your answers.

Just as for my Russian students, your class is select a spokesperson and a single set of answers for classroom presentation.