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Usually your tutor will decide what form your writing should (like writing essays) take and will lay it out in the assessment criteria. However, the further you go into your academic career, the more freedom of choice you will have. This means that you need to engage more in the decision of what is the most appropriate form of writing, writing essays or reports.For your university life, and for your working life beyond, it’s important to be able to distinguish between writing reports and writing essays, and to be able to understand why you might write one rather than the other.
When choosing to write a report or an writing essay for your assignment you should understand these key differences:
Purpose
Reports are the presentation and analysis of findings from practical research. They begin with an aim (to investigate, to explore) and probably ahypothesis (a proposition that the research will test). Depending on the guidelines or purpose, a report may make recommendations.Writing essays begin with a question and seek to answer that question based on research into existing theories and through the writer’s own evaluation. An essay may include results of practical research but only in so far as it may help support the writer’s conclusions.
Content
Reports are generally descriptive, reporting sequential events (experiments or fixed results from surveys etc). However, they involve an evaluation in either the conclusion or recommendations sections.Writing essays can be descriptive, discursive, evaluative, etc. This is dependent on the process given in the essay question. Content usually involves asynthesis of knowledge gained from existing texts and from the author's own opinions and argument.
Format
Both essays and reports use an introduction and conclusion format. The main content, findings, analysis etc. come inbetween.
A report generally has a fixed structure. The choice of sections will depend on the purpose of your report and, while at uni, the preferences of your tutor or department.In writing essays, the thought process taken from the question dictates the structure of the main body of an essay.
Difference between report and essay is that report is accounting for an event or activity that took place and must be sectioned heading by heading while essay is a literary composition of a topic.
the difference is that in easy your write related to the topic given to you or the on the content but in report you say or write what you are watching or what is happening
Report writing is done having some in the mind wherein the writer report regarding a particular event and program that has happened and a report carries a executive summery and the report focus is on some specific thing which is in the mind of a writer and the audience of report is an official if it is being done for organization.
while an easy carries an structure which is based on an introduction of the topic which is chosen by the writer that to be written, and easy contains a conclusion wherein the writer could float some good idea regarding the topic and the main thing of the easy's are share in the body of the easy wherein it through lights on the all aspect of the easy.
The basic difference in Essay writing and report writing is, in Essay you have to write stories and in report writing you have to be precise. For writing essay you can use number of pages, but while writing report you have to take care of the length i.e. short and sweet.
For getting A+ in essay writing you have to;
a) Choose interesting topic
b) Have enough data to write
c) Follow sequel
d) Ending should be breath taking
Although it is up to the instructor to choose the subject of the essay, it is the student that can mold the subject and the body of the essay into the world of his/her choosing. The key to getting an A+ on your report, is not only to structure it right and provide supporting materials and creditable information, the main key to have a good essay is to make it unique, unprecedented, and powerful.
A report does not aim to be unique, it's aim is to deliver an accurate description and point out the flaws, and good aspects of a situation.
In order to score A+ on an essay, the essay needs to be well structured and, definitely, well-researched. Structure may seem a very basic idea, however, it has an enormous impact on how the thoughts and findings are demonstrated. Some essays may be very well-researched and the findings are valuable, but the manner--or structure for this matter--in which the ideas are laid out results in a shoddy outcome. Additionally, punctuation and grammar contribute to an essay with very high quality and an effective research design.
The difference between an essay and a report is that a report needs to be technical and detailed, while an essay is more academic. A report expounds findings based on facts and analyses them accordingly, whereas an essay provides assertions/propositions backed by well-researched evidence, which can be refuted by other well-researched evidence as well.
Original thinking
Solid, in-depth knowledge and understanding
The hallmark of the truly brilliant essay is original thinking. That doesn’t have to mean coming up with an entirely new theory; most of, if not all, the topics you’ll be studying at GCSE, A-level or even undergraduate level have been thought about in so much depth and by so many people that virtually every possible angle will have been thought of already. But what it does mean is that the essay stands out from those of other students in that it goes beyond the obvious and takes an original approach – perhaps approaching the topic from a different angle, coming up with a different hypothesis from what you’ve been discussing in class, or introducing new evidence and intelligent insights from material not included on the reading list.
It goes without saying that the brilliant essay should demonstrate a strong knowledge of the facts, and not just knowledge but sound comprehension of the concepts or issues being discussed and why they matter. The perfect essay demonstrates an ability to deploy relevant facts and use them to form the basis of an argument or hypothesis. It covers a wide range of material and considers every point of view, confidently making use of and quoting from a variety of sources.
The perfect essay provides a coherent discussion of both sides of the story, developing a balanced argument throughout, and with a conclusion that weighs up the evidence you’ve covered and perhaps provides your own intelligent opinion on how the topic should be interpreted based on the evidence covered.
Everything written in the perfect essay serves a purpose – to inform and persuade. There’s no rambling or going off at tangents – it sticks to the point and doesn’t waste the reader’s time. This goes back to our earlier point about sorting the relevant facts from the irrelevant material; including material that isn’t relevant shows that you’ve not quite grasped the real heart of the matter.
The words in the perfect essay flow effortlessly, and the reader feels in safe hands. Sentences need never be read more than once to be understood, and each follows logically on from the next, with no random jumping about from topic to topic from one paragraph to the next. Spelling and grammar are flawless, with no careless typos.
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ESSAY & REPORT
Reports have a formalised structure (i.e. executive summary, scope, discussion, recommendations) and are written with a specific purpose in mind, or with a particular focus. That given structure supports that purpose. See an example that illustrates the elements of a report under When should I use headings?.
This structure is often dictated by the discipline you will be writing in. For example, Psychology uses a specific laboratory report structure (see recommended resources for Psychology, including an extract from O'Shea (2002) 'Quick start for reports') that differs from one in Science (see recommended resources for Science; for example, an extract from Drury (1997) 'Results'). BusEco's report preferences are different again and that faculty's Q Manual outlines the requirements. Just how your lecturer would prefer your report to be structured will be given in your subject's Unit Guide.
Essays are structured around an introduction, body and conclusion, and the text itself is separated into paragraphs. See examples of the more formalised components of the essay, the introduction and the conclusion, in What does a good introduction look like? and What does a good conclusion look like?. The structure of an essay is not as formalised as that of a report. In some ways, you have more discretion about how you put your essay together, although you need to adhere to disciplinary expectations. Like reports, however, you must still provide an argument or position that is clearly sustained; that is, your reader must be able to follow what you have written. Refer to 'The reader – the writer' in How can I improve my argument? for more on this.
Essays mostly are stories with headings for particular purpose in sections,unlike reports you need to analysis, evaluation and produce the final version to support your findings
To get A+ in my essay certains criterias must be included to make my essay descriptive, interesting and consise. The grammar used must be well structured and words properly spelt, good layout of the essay, educative, points raised in my essay must be interesting and balance with the topic given; and the conclusion must be related to the topic given.
The diffrence between writing essays and writing reports is that, essay writing is generic and with a fixed topic to write on. While writing reports as to do with visiting a site, present observations and identified shortcomings and stating recommendation to mitigate the risks identified.
You get an A+ on your essay or any other academic work by having thourougly read all the readings related to your subject that were given in class.
In an essay you have to follow writing and grammatical rules but you have certain room to express your opinions. The length of the essay is not a demonstration of it's quality.
A report has to be concise and go to the point without an addition of the writer's point of view unless it is asked.
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