Throughout your life you will need to write e-mails, letters, web pages, blogs, essays and reports. Your written communication method and degree of fomality will depend on who you are writing to, and why. Your Learning Development Centre can give you additonal infomation with examples.
Essays and reports
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Essays and reports are formal methods of communication and require attention to detail and a good writing style. The guidance given in this section is general and not subject specific. You should always check the guidelines in your module handbook for detailed specifications for your subject. You'll find them on GCULearn.
There are 5 stages in preparing written assignments:
Once you have worked out what you are being asked to do and have found relevant and good quality information, you will need to make sense of all the data. Go through all the material and be brutal in rejecting unnecessary or irrelevant information.
Only select the data that will help you answer the question. It can be disappointing to discard material you have gathered, but your lecturer only wants you to include material that is relevant. Pick out the central themes and concentrate on these.
This video from Dr Jane McKay, HLS LDC will help get you started.
Hint: Go through your notes and highlight relevant material in green. Highlight in red any material that can be discarded and highlight in yellow anything you are unsure of. Now you have a clearer idea of what you should include.
Essays and reports are designed to inform the reader about a certain topic. So you need to make sure that you don't confuse your reader by not having a logical structure.
Remember that your work should have an introduction, middle and conclusion. Your essay or report should flow from section to section. There should be logical links between each paragraph or section. Therefore plan your structure carefully. Put your arguments in order and consider if they make sense. There are lots of different ways to do this:
If your order fails to flow then re-order the points. The following pages will give you some suggestions.
Top tip: If the suggestions on the following pages don't work for your topic, then consider using the frameworks created by Stella Cottrell. These act as an excellent outline for what you should consider for an argumentative essay and a compare and contrast essay.
Essays are a piece of discursive work and often have no formal layout in terms of heading and sub-headings. However, this does not mean that essays should not have a logical structure. The format for an essay can vary by school, so always check your module guide! (It is on GCULearn).
Before you start, watch this vidcast by Angela Shapiro, ADT EBE.
EBE also have some pages on structuring and planning your assignment. As with reports, you need an introduction, middle and conclusion:
A good introduction:
The main body builds on your argument and should contain evidence and examples that support your ideas.
Good conclusions:
References: You should provide a list of all the authors you have cited in your essay.
More help is available from your Learning Development Centre.
Reports are designed to be read quickly and easily. Often only parts of a report are read in detail. Reports vary from essays as they have a more formal layout and normally use numbering, headings and sub-headings to indicate sections. The format for a report can vary by school, so always check your module guide! (It is on GCULearn). Reports often include:
This vidcast has been created by Angela Shapiro, EBE LDC. Is describes how to write a final year technical report. Bear in mind that any examples will refer to EBE courses.
Want to know more? - we have more detailed pages on technical writing later in this section. More help is available from your Learning Development Centre.
Now that you have a structure, read our section on writing your assignment to make sure that you fill it with the best quality content.