A report is yet another type of a paper writing assignment you are very likely to do while being a student. Though it may be somewhat similar to writing an essay, it’s very important that you know the difference between the former and the latter. An essay is a piece of writing that describes, analyses, and evaluates a specific topic or problem. An essay usually contains a combination of facts, statistics, and the opinion of essay writer.

A report is usually a small research paper that has to be presented in a written or verbal form (most likely, you will have to do both at once). Its main goal is to provide information to the audience on some narrow topic. It usually takes from 10 to 15 minutes to present your report.

Since you’ll most likely have to present your report in a written form, you need to know about the standard structure you can use to build your report on. More often than not, it’s not much different from essay structure and includes title, introduction, main body consisting of separate paragraphs and a conclusion. The only difference is your report main body must be much smaller than that of an essay. Consequently, making your introduction and conclusion parts too large won’t make sense either.

How to write a report? Writing tips

Step 1. Choosing your topic report.

This will be quite easy of your teacher gave you a list of topics to choose from: you can just pick one that looks most promising to you and go to the next step. If it’s not the case and you have to choose a narrow topic by yourself, be sure to pick one that really speaks to you and inspires you.

Step 2. Looking for sources and materials and doing some research on the subject.

Taking into account the fact that you can find a ton of sources online, from scientific research to statistics and board discussions, this should not be too hard to do either. However, don’t forget to double check the facts you find and make sure that the information illustrates your report topic in full measure.

Step 3. Writing your report’s main body.

This step can be divided into three parts. First of all, prepare a thesis statement — the main idea and basis of your work. Unlike in case of writing essay, one thesis statement should be quite enough. Another important aspect that differs a report from an essay — there’s no place for subjectivity here. Your reports must always be as objective as possible.

After you have a solid thesis statement, you can create an outline for your report. You can put your thesis statement first and then provide arguments for it, or vice versa — just be sure to think of your report structure before actually writing it.

As soon as you have a distinct plan, it’s time to write your report. There are not many rules for how you should write it, but there are three things that must always be there:

  1. No plagiarism. Don’t use too many quotes or any pieces of texts written by someone other.
  2. No mistakes. Your spelling, grammar, and style must be up to scratch. Needless to say, no misprints or factual errors must be found.
  3. Academic style. Using slang words or informal speech won’t do.

The last part is writing your introduction and conclusion — typical structural parts of any paper assignment. The introduction includes your thesis statement, your report goals and reasons why you’ve chosen the topic. Conclusion is for drawing a bottom line and summarising your ideas.

While reports are not the hardest research papers you’ll have to do during your studying, it’s possible you’ll encounter some issues, especially in case this type of work is quite new to you or if you are overloaded with other assignments. Whatever your problem is, it’s always possible to ask for professional writing help at dissertationlabs.com