How to Write a Report in English

How to Write a Report in English

A report is a text created to communicate and inform about a situation from several perspectives, a form can be asked for in any field, may you be in school, college, jobs, etc. but to write them there are several steps we must learn and follow.

With OneHowTo you can learn how to write a report in English properly.

Steps to follow:
1

A report must be written in clear language, it must be precise, to the point, objective, must exclude personal appreciations, avoiding words such as think, believe, like to, wish, and must use terms such as see, analize, procede, etc.

2

There are several types of report. They can be narrative, interpretative and demonstrative.

  • The narrative report is a sequence of facts narrated with no analysis or interpretations by the author, it must contain background which helps people understand what is being told, for example a product's sales in a commercial shop.
  • The interpretative report analyzes situations to reach conclusions and be able to give recommendations such as the creation of an analysis on teaching methods.
  • The demonstrative report is the one that is contemplated after a study, it describes the steps followed, the conclusions obtained and also receives the scientific or technical name.
3

To write a report in English, you should know that it's a procedure that has several stages: set an objective, select information, analyse it, evaluate and verify, structure your report and proceed to work on it.

4

To set an objective, ask yourself the following: how am I writing this report for?, what's the use he/she's going to make of it? what is needed to be known, what knowledge does he/she have on the subject?

5

Define the preliminary phase of activities you'll be doing to achieve your chosen evaluation criteria. Determine your information sources, human resources and material resources to extract data. Once you have them, analyze all the selected information, organize it and compare properly.

6

Evaluate data and proceed to verify the data, check information, organise and write the form.

7

The report structure divides in three parts:

  • The introduction answers the following questions: what for?, why, and how?
  • The development presents procedure or methodology used to get the information, it answers the question How?
  • Finally, the conclusions, where the obtained results are presented, answering question what was found? what must be done?
8

As general recommendations to apply on your report, we're giving you the following: your report must be objective, no subjectivity allowed, mention as much data as possible, make it organized, describe each step in detail, mention all information sources, emphasize on quantity not quality, write short, clear, precise and specific sentences.

9

If you want to know how to write specialized reports, take a look at the following articles: How to write an analytical report

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