Reports

Book Reports

Book report writing is somewhat close to critical reviews, but still stands on its own. The main difference is in feedback. When writing a book report, you are supposed to share your impressions and evaluate the content in accordance with three main parameters: theme of the book, its characters, and plot. Critical review, in its turn, also gives advice on how unsatisfactory parts and mistakes are and what could have been corrected.

When deciding upon what to report on, choose a book you feel positive about. Your report writing will only benefit from such a choice, since your personal interest in the book will contribute to in-depth analysis and stimulate critical thinking. Good analysis starts during the actual process of reading. Get ready to take notes on details that you think will be important during the writing process. Also, keep a tentative plan of a future book report in mind, and pay attention to the quotes that will support your point of view. Quotations are extremely important when it comes to writing book reports, because they are the facts you are operating with.

Book report is usually a relatively short assignment, so you should better decide what point of the book will be analyzed. The most obvious criterion is the plot. At this point, you, as a book report writer, should give a summary of the story in context of its significance to the audience, historical generation it was initially intended for, and, finally, its worthiness for future generations. Your task is to avoid plain retelling. The potential audience (which is your teacher or professor usually) knows what is going on with the characters. He/she will be more interested in your understanding of the problem, so what you need to do is write about your feelings and back them up with some parts of the authentic text.

Another way to write a book report is to explore the characters. Here you will need to reveal hidden relations between the types of heroes and the way they bring forward the problem that is central to the plot. Is a character positive or negative? How does the author explain the peculiarities of his personality? Can the main character be described as the son of his epoch, and what was the historical context that influenced formation of his nature? The more detailed you get, the deeper the analysis will be. Author’s quotations have to be your main arguments.

A tale as old as time is the theme that is put into the book. Really, there are not so many topics in the history of literature to dance around. Three is the most. It is the way authors twist them that makes books interesting and worth reading. When writing a book report and concentrating on the underlying themes, analyze the problem that became a purpose of writing, and how it is revealed through the scenes and characters. Give some light on how the theme influenced you personally and tell if this problem is still popular.

Lab Reports

Lab report requires different sets of skills. It gets more into details and practice. Close to lab reports are case report writings and psychological reports. They all need theoretical framework.

Apart from small requisites, such as the Title Page and Bibliography, there are several big parts that need deep thinking. One of them is the Abstract – a part that is common for all scientific research papers. Its goal is to introduce a topic to the readers, and also give a brief description of the purpose of an experiment, its significant findings and major accomplishments.

When writing a lab report, be sure to include the Introduction, where you will present a problem in greater details, and also share your predictions and expectations with the audience. Your problem has to sound significant even if you are a beginner who is investigating quite a regular object. Find an angle at which your research will gain new meanings.

Be sure to describe the procedure itself in the lab report. The key word for this part of report writing is being precise. Give detailed description when providing information on the type of equipment and materials used, especially if they are unique and specific. Pay attention to the measurements – the numbers have to be correct. The procedure itself has to have a step-by-step description. Your writing has to have a shape of good and helpful instructions. Some of the readers may want to repeat your experiment.

One of the important steps in writing a lab report is critical analysis of your own work. It has to be placed in the section called Results. After you got data from the experiments, think it over and make a deep evaluation of its significance. It is better when your statements are backed up by visual proofs, such as tables, graphs, and figures. If your report is handwritten, illustrations have to be understandable and readable. But it is better to hand in typed reports and tables constructed with the help of computer graphics.

Finally, move on to writing your conclusion. Do you remember the predictions and the expectations you have made in your introduction? Well, it is high time to get back to them (refer to them the audience) and state which of them turned out to be true and which failed to pass the testing. If there was something wrong with the actions you took, write about it to warn your followers from repeating the same mistakes. Write if something could have been done better, but concentrate on your achievements, as well.

Among the most popular report types, there are case report, analytical report, and business report writing. Depending on the depth of analysis, all of them can be written following the pattern above.