Class Time: Monday 13:10~17:30 Classroom: 260815 Office Hours: Tuesday 14:00~16:00; 18:00~20:00; by appointment.
Course Objectives
This two-semester course is designed to provide an overview of financial accounting, including introductory accounting theory, concepts, principles, and procedures. In last semester, you have learned basic structure and concepts of accounting (Chapters 1~5, Appendix G) and accounting for assets (Chapters 6~9, except the second half of Chapter 9 and Chapter 13). In this second semester, I will cover the last two topics: accounting for investments (Chapter 13) and statement of cash flows (Chapter 14).
Financial accounting focuses on providing information that is relevant and useful for external users but not for internal users. Therefore, this course concentrates on the preparation, understanding, and analysis of the balance sheet, income statement, statement of shareholders’ equity, and statement of cash flows.
Since we have to finish 2 complex and difficult chapters within 4 weeks, we suffer high time pressure. Therefore, it is your responsibility to review the chapter materials before you come to the class. In the class, I will simply outline the key concepts and answer your questions. If you do not review the lecture materials, you may not be able to understand what I say.
02/23/2026 Course Introduction (Syllabus to be distributed today)
05/11/2026 Chapter 13 Investments Chapter 13
05/18/2026 Chapter 13 Investments
05/25/2026 Chapter 14 Statement of Cash Flows Chapter 14
06/01/2026 Chapter 14 Statement of Cash Flows
06/6/2026 Final Exam (Chapters 12, 13, 14)(**Saturday afternoon**)
Textbook
Weygandt and Kimmel, 2023, Financial Accounting with IFRS, 5th Edition, John Wiley & Sons (Wiley Custom Edition).
We will closely follow the textbook and finish Chapters 13-14 in this semester. Students are expected to read the book and be prepared to discuss the lecture materials.
Class Performance
It is your responsibility to attend and actively participate in each lecture. I will ask you questions on a surprise basis and your responses will be considered as an important part of your overall performance in this course. No talking, eating, sleeping, randomly walking, passing private notes, or doing anything unrelated to the lectures are allowed; or you will be kicked out of the classroom. Please turn off your mobile phone while you are in classes. If your mobile phone beeps during any class, I will confisticate it and give it to the Department staff for one week. Also, you are NOT allowed to bring and use mobile phones in the exams and quizzes.
Honor Code
"NO PAIN, NO GAIN" is an appropriate motto for this course because struggling with the textbook exercises and problems is absolutely necessary to understand the material. Therefore, you are strongly encouraged to work in groups in solving the problems. You are also welcomed to discuss problems with the instructor and your TA.
There are a lot of practice questions and problems at the end of each chapter. You are expected to do all the self-study questions, questions, and brief exercises. In considering your time constraint, selected exercises and problems are listed in the “Class Schedule” on page 5. However, you are expected to do all the exercises and problems. These exercises and problems are the basis for class discussion and are very important to your learning process. Students who attempt and complete these assignments generally perform significantly better in this course.
English Proficiency
Being an NCCU student, you should not suffer serious problem in English reading and writing. However, students always complain that they have fully understood the textbook materials, but cannot perform well in the exams simply because they are unable to comprehend what the exam questions mean. My suggestions are: (a) never use a Chinese-translated version of the textbook, and (b) do the exercises and problems at the end of each chapter as many as possible to get used to professional accounting terms.
English is very important not only because it will help you survive and succeed in your future career. There is no shortcut to polishing your English proficiency. You should take every chance and try very hard to learn it. I will not accept any English-related complaints about the exams (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, length of questions and problems). It is your responsibility to be well-prepared for all the English-written exams and quizzes. Please note that you are NOT allowed to bring and use a dictionary (either paper- or electronic-based) in the exams and quizzes.
Length of Class Time
I usually spend 4.5 ~ 5 hours in each week for my lectures. Taiwan has fully adopt the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in 2013 and these IFRS are different from the US standards. Therefore, it is necessary to briefly introduce both sets of standards in this course. You should know IFRS because all countries in the world have adopted them since 2016. You should know US standards because they provide a more precise framework for you to know accounting. Therefore, we DO need more time in each week to finish the lecture materials. Some students complain that the length of time is too long because: (a) they cannot concentrate during the last hour, (b) they have to take another course at 19:00, and (c) they just don’t like overly-long classes. It really makes me tired to stand in front of you and keep talking for five hours. However, I never complain about this because I strongly believe that it is my responsibility to teach all you have to know so that you can build up a solid foundation for more advanced accounting courses, if this is your main purpose of taking Accounting as your major. I’ll try to finish my lecture within 4.5 hours. However, for most topics, I may need up to 5 hours.