Academic reports in English

A common pattern of organisation used in academic reports is to divide into 1) introduction, 2) body and 3) conclusion. This lecture describes this pattern and then shows how to write body paragraphs dividing them in to 'topic sentences' and 'supporting information'.

The introduction is the first paragraph of an academic report. It has a number of overlapping purposes such as:    1) To tell the reader what the report is about. 2) To show how the report will be organised. 3) To show the order of topics in the report. 4) To make the reader interested in the report.

If you can write a clear and informative introduction it will really help the reader to feel positive about your report and make them want to keep reading. This lecture shows you how to do this.

The conclusion is the last paragraph of an academic report. It has a number of overlapping purposes such as: 1) to signal the end of the report. 2) to summarise the main points. 3) to suggest a future issue This lesson looks at these purposes and compares a conclusion with the thesis statement in the introduction.

In this lecture we learn about writing references or using source material in our reports. We use references to provide support and help our readers to trust our ideas more. We can include these outside sources into our reports by changing into our own words (paraphrasing) or by quoting them. We do this using reporting verbs or phrases or just a citation. We also include information on the year of publication, the writer’s family name and page number.

In this lecture we learn about writing a reference list of the source material that we have used in our reports. The reference list is at the end of the report and should include enough information so that a reader can find a source if they need to. Such information includes information on the year of publication and the writer’s name. More and more sources are now online so it is important to be able to show those materials clearly too.

Plagiarism means copying other people’s work without clearly showing references. It is a serious issue as it is seen as a kind of cheating and is taken very seriously by universities, publishers and individual teachers. But it is easy to learn some simple strategies to avoid it: referencing properly using quotations, paraphrasing and summarising.

In this lecture we will look at different ‘voices’ that you can use in your academic writing. Your voice is how you can position yourself as a writer with your readers. These voices include different ranges of overlapping features: for example from subjective to objective; or from certain to less certain; and from personal to detached.

In previous lectures we have seen that organising our writing into clear stages is an important process. Luckily there are some common patterns in academic writing which can help us carry out this organisation. In this lesson we will look at the first of two such patterns: the problem-solution pattern.

In this lesson we take a look at another common pattern in academic writing: the contrast and compare pattern. We look at organing your writing either 'horizontally' or 'vertically'; and then discover some useful words and phrases that signal comparison or contrast.

It is important to make your academic reports look as good as possible, so in this lesson I give several tips on how to do this: using white space; choosing fonts, line spacing and text effects.

In this final lesson we learn about editing - the last stage of the writing process. This involves checking the accuracy of your language including grammar and spelling, making any minor final changes to help the report read smoothly, and making sure that your report looks beautiful.