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Monday, May 3, 2010

WRITING A REPORT: useful vocabulary and grammar

I´ve found this interesting piece of news about a School Science Fair in Plymouth,
published at The Bristol Press.

This article talks about the Fair, how it was organised, who won the first prizes and explains some of the students´experiments, providing some of their comments and reactions.

This site includes a list of blogs on the right, with a topic sentence summarising each blog´s contents.

It also has a section below where comments can be submitted.
Now, I have selected a paragraph to focus attention on some items which might be useful for you when writing your own reports.
Pay attention, take notes and stop before the explanations to think on your own




Thursday, April 1, 2010 10:42 PM EDT (1)
By Freesia Singngam
Staff Writer (2)

PLYMOUTH —(3) Their experiments ranged from analyzing plant growth to making their own batteries, but all the 7th-grade students (4) from Bonnie Doughty-Jenkins’ class (5)used the scientific method for their entries in the third-annual Eli Terry Jr. Middle School Science Fair Wednesday (6).“They had to come up with a question they wanted to test,” Doughty-Jenkins said (7) About 80 students from her classes entered the fair, but in the end (8), one student won it all. Spencer Pilarski won the first place trophy with “The Effect of Various Liquids on a Nail.” In a wooden box, he placed cups of several different liquids including ammonia, ginger ale, lemonade and salt water. Then he put one nail in each. He found that salt water rusted the nail the most.“I thought I wasn’t going to win it,” he said (9)
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BEFORE LOOKING AT THE NOTES BELOW,

FOLLOW THESE STEPS:

1. READ THE FULL TEXT TRYING TO UNDERSTAND IT.

2. THEN, FOCUS ATTENTION ON THE COLOURED EXPRESSIONS TRYING TO GUESS THE REASON WHY THEY HAVE BEEN HIGHTLIGHTED.
3. WRITE YOUR CONCLUSIONS ON YOUR INTERNET-SHEET
4. ANSWER THE FINAL TWO QUESTIONS AT THE END OF YOUR WORK ON YOUR INTERNET-SHEET AND AS A "COMENTARIO" HERE. REMEMBER TO WRITE YOUR NAME!

NOTES:

(1) Date: Notice one of the ways of writing the date.
(2) By: Used to introduce the author of the report --also used for films or books, i.e. directed by; written by. Notice the structure BY + NAME OF THE PERSON WHO WROTE THE ARTICLE + WHO HE/SHE IS.
(3) PLYMOUTH: This is the place where the event took place.
(4) Los estudiantes de 7º grado
(5) De la clase de Bonnie Doughty-Jenkins. An example of the use of the Saxon Genitive form. Notice the structure NAME OF THE TEACHER + ´S + CLASS
(6) La Feria de Ciencias del Colegio Eli Terry. Notice the order of elements in English --DETERMINER + NOUN.
(7) Dijo Daughty-Jenkins. Notice the order SUBJECT + VERB and the use of the verb say --said, to report someone else´s words.
(8) al final
(9) dijo. Notice the use and order of SUBJECT + VERB, though in Spanish the subject is not needed. See (7)
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1. Has this post been useful to you?

2. What did you appreciate most?


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