Transcript MSO Induction: Report Writing at 3rd Level

Report Writing at 3rd-level
Lawrence Cleary, Patricia Herron, Dr. Íde
O’Sullivan, Research Officers, Regional
Writing Center, UL
Seminar Outline
• Lab Reports as a ‘type’
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Types
Typical Structure
Specifications for lab reports in physics and biology at UL
Inconsistencies across disciplines and within disciplines
• Style and Tone: Initial Overscientifisication and
Underfirstpersonnongrataficticiousication of a Lab Report
in Progress
• Looking Ahead: Writing in Your Chosen Profession
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Lab Report as a ‘type’
• Science, Technical, Business and Research Reports
• Primary and Secondary Research Reports, Progress /
Status Reports, Business Plans and Proposals, Feasibility,
Evaluation and Recommendation Reports, Technical
Background Reports, Instructions, Users Guides,
Organizational Policies and Procedures, and Technical
Specifications
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Commonalities
• They set out a series of facts based on evidence of some
kind.
• The information they provide can usually be checked.
• This information is set out in such a way as to be most
useful to the reader. The reports have special rules or
conventions covering how information is presented.
• They are usually aimed at readers with a specific interest
in the subject.
(Seely 2002: 7)
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Typical Structure
• Typically, Lab Reports are organized
around the following section headings:
Title
Abstract
Introduction
Materials and
methods
Results
Discussion
Literature cited
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Specs for Lab Reports
in Physics and Biology
• Typical Layout:
1. Title [Short and clear]
2. The aim of the experiment [what you hoped
to achieve]
3. Theory
4. Diagram of apparatus
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Specs for Lab Reports
in Physics and Biology
• Typical Layout (con’t):
4. Procedure [in a numbered list, give brief
detail of how the experiment is performed
etc.]
5. Results
6. Analysis
7. Discussion / Conclusions
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Additional Information for Writers of
Physics and Biology Lab Reports
• Graphs are plotted to find relationships between
measured variables. Guidelines are very specific
about how they should be plotted.
• Reports must be written up in an A4-sized
hardback science notebook only.
• Pay attention to the presentation.
• Reports must be completed before leaving the
lab.
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One size does not fit all
• Not all disciplines use the same format or
structure for their lab reports, nor do different
disciplines have the same expectations for what
seem on the surface to be similar requirements.
• Not all teachers in each discipline have the same
requirements. Pay attention to individual teacher
expectations.
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Best Advice
• Know what your particular instructor requires.
• Follow guidelines to a T. If no guidelines are required, ask
for guidelines or a model to follow.
• Give the information asked for and nothing more. More is
not necessarily better. Concise precision is.
• Write legibly.
• Answer questions intelligently and intelligibly, expressing
ideas concisely, yet clearly.
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Style and Tone
• Style as Choice
• Stylistic features common to scientific and
technical writing
• Style and Tone
• On Ambiguity
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Style as Choice
“Every writer has available the enormous resources
of a whole language. English presents a particularly
large range of choices of individual words, and of
combinations of words into small and large
‘structures’—idioms, phrases, clauses, sentences,
paragraphs, sections, chapters. The choices we
make create the ‘style’, which is a term covering
balance, emphasis and tone.”
(Kirkman 2005:1)
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Variety and Flexibility
“…too many writers”, states John Kirkman
(2005: 3), “try to restrict their choices to
formal, third-person, passive, impersonal
constructions. The cumulative effect of this is
a sense of monotonous, roundabout
clumsiness.”
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Stylistic features common to
scientific and technical writing
• Sentences
– Short v. long
– Simple v. complex
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Stylistic features common to
scientific and technical writing
• vocabulary
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Short vs long phrases
Ordinary vs grandiose
Familiar vs unfamiliar
Non-technical vs technical
Concrete vs abstract
Normal, comfortable idiomatic expression vs special, stiff scientific
idioms
– Direct incisive phrasing vs roundabout, verbose phrasing
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Stylistic features common to
scientific and technical writing
• Verb Forms
– Active vs passive
– Personal vs impersonal
– Informal vs formal
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Stylistic features common to
scientific and technical writing
• Paragraphing
– Use vs non-use
– Coherent vs incoherent
– Cohesive vs incohesive
– Unified vs Disjointed
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Stylistic features common to
scientific and technical writing
• Mechanics
– Spelling
– Capitalization
– Punctuation: Careful use vs casual, random use
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Style and Tone
“Tone reveals the writer’s attitude toward
the reader and the subject. Tone is a matter
of syntax, diction, and subject matter”
(Rubens 2001: 81).
After you investigate the proposed system in detail, you
should thoroughly understand its architecture. So you
might want to get going on a prototype of the new
system asap.
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Rhetorical Situation
Sometimes, the elements that make one or some
other version of a text more effective may not be a
matter of the accuracy or clarity of technical content
any more than it is a matter of grammatical
‘correctness’. Sometimes, communicative
effectiveness comes down to a writer’s
understanding of her relationship with her audience
and of the context into which she writes (Kirkman
2005: 1-2).
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Ambiguity
• “As readers and listeners we can, if we
wish, willfully misconstrue almost any
statement, especially one that contains
general rather than special vocabulary”
(Kirkman 2005: 137).
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Looking Ahead:
Writing in Your Chosen Profession
“We wish to argue for two broad kinds of knowledge about writing that
are potentially capable of helping people to cope with the transfer and
adaptation of foundation literacy skills to the workplace: 1)
metacognitive knowledge about the best ways of solving the problems of
writing; 2) conceptual knowledge about the nature of writing. We do not
consider it at all likely that workplaces themselves would provide
significant education in respect of either of these; rather we see it as the
job of formal education to initiate the appropriate learning in respect of
each of these areas, in the expectation that subsequent experiences in
work will inevitably provide the circumstances for their development and
consolidation” (Davies and Birbili 2000: 440-441).
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Looking Ahead:
Writing in Your Chosen Profession
“Communication in writing for varied purposes” was in amongst the top
thirteen attributes that employers wish graduates to have, and “written
communication” in the top ten list of the most important professional
transferable skills to have (Sherry and Hunt 2007: 2; Curry, Sherry, and
Tunney 2003: 5, 18).
“…it is important not to lose sight of the fact that there were a number
of skills highlighted with which all responding employers have a lower
level of satisfaction yet regard as particularly important – time
management, coping with multiple tasks and written communication and it is recommended that particular attention be paid to these skills in
third-level education”(Curry, Sherry, and Tunney 2003: 22).
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Sources
• Curry, P., Sherry, R., and Tunney, O. 2003 What Transferable Skills
Do Employers Look for inThird-level Graduates?: Results of Employer
Survey. Dublin: Transferable Skills Project.
• Davies, C. and Bilbili, M. 2000 “What do People Need to Know about
Writing in Order to Write in Their Jobs?” British Journal of Educational
Studies 48(4): 429-445.
• Dolphin, W.D. 1997 “Writing Lab Reports and Scientific Papers”
[online], available:
http://www.mhhe.com/biosci/genbio/maderinquiry/writing.html
[accessed 13 Aug, 2008].
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Sources
• Guidance on the Arrangement of Written Reports (n.d.) (n.p.)
• Kirkman, J. 2005 Good Style: Writing for Science and Technology, 2nd
ed. Routledge Study Guides, London: Routledge.
• McMurray, D. A. (n.d.) Online Technical Writing: Online Textbook—
Contents [online], available: http://www.io.com/~hcexres/textbook/
[accessed 15 Aug 2008].
• Rubens, P. 2001 Science and Technical Writing: A Manual of Style, 2nd
ed. Routledge: New York.
• Seely, J. 2002 Writing Reports. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Sources
• Sherry, R. and Hunt, I. 2007 The Teaching, Learning, and
Development of Professional Transferable Skills: A Community of
Practice (COP) Report, COP 5. Limerick: Programme for University
Industry Interface.
• UEfAP.com 2008 “Writing Paragraphs” [online], available:
http://www.uefap.com/writing/exercise/parag/paragex1.htm
[accessed 15 Aug, 2008].
• Young, T. Technical Writing A-Z: A Commonsense Guide to
Engineering Reports and Theses, British English Edition. New York:
ASME Press.
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