Mpansu Tunkara
Fall 2022 Technical writing 202
Prof. Pamela Stemberg
The 8 basic elements of a report are:
- Title
- Abstract
- Introduction
- Methods and Materials
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- References
- Title:
A title on a report is something that gives you a main point to what the whole document it’s to be about. The title is the first thing that would be looked at before trying to be interested in anything in the document. The title makes it easier to understand what the main idea of the document would be about.
- Abstract:
An abstract is mostly to be of a summary of what the report would be about. It mostly tells all about the report but just some of it because it’s different from a conclusion. This part has to answer most of the question like what kind of experiment is conducted and what are the methods and prosses that are used to get it done, the results are also to be identified and also the complications and errors getting the results are to be notified.
- Introduction:
Introduction is always in the beginning of every document and in a report, its brief of information that will help the reader know what he will find in the report as he read through it. The introduction is like an opening of lab where you will tell what the experiment is about, and the purpose of the document been written. What are not included is your results and hypothesis, that will be to early to know about in a introduction.
- Methods and materials:
In a report there should be information about what’s been used to do the experiment or the research. That would be know be showing the equipment’s that has been used and the steps that were taking so that way anyone who reads the lab would learn what to do to get the results when doing a similar experiment. In this part of the aspect will include the calculation that was given such as measurements and mathematical equations.
- Results:
Results is where you give the outcome of the method that was used in the experiment.
This is the part where you inform how the methods and the materials end up given you a outcome, it’s to be explained in a chart or a bar graph or chart where it could be understood about your results. This part is to explain the data that was collected and how was it collected and if there was calculation that was done it should be included.
- Discussion:
With the report it needs a little more detail on how the experiment was done and how long did it take to get it done. The interesting part here is to detail any mistakes and errors that were made before getting the results, this is to help others that interested in doing the experiment to know what to avoid and what to do to get it done correctly. The discussion part is to also give your thoughts about the errors and other things that you’ve experienced during the procedure.
- Conclusion:
A conclusion is giving the whole summary about the report this is where you rewrite what you’ve wrote about in the report and restate your purpose of this report was about, results and calculation is also included in this section. What was learned and understood and avoided and errors are to be included here as well.
- References:
References is where you give information on where you got your resources from. This includes website links and other stuff that would help others understand more about the report and expand the experiences. This is where you put your citations at.
