Research Report Writing

1. Research Report
Writing

2. Introduction
 Can research be conducted without writing?
 "Writing is communication, not self-expression.” (Richard Peck)
 "Writing has been for a long time my major tool for self-instruction and self-
development" (Toni Cade Bambara)
 "I think writing is really a process of communication. . . . It's the sense of
being in contact with people who are part of a particular audience that really
makes a difference to me in writing” (Sherley Anne Williams, poet)
 Writing is the most important way to communicate research findings;

3. Drafting and re-drafting
 Writing up your research should start early and become a
regular and continuing activity;
 It is also likely to be a cyclical process:
 You will draft a section or chapter, then move on to some other
activity, and return one or more times to re-draft your original
version;
 This is partly because what you have written in subsequent
sections affects what you wrote earlier and necessitates
changes in it;
 As your research proceeds you find out more, read more, and
change your mind about some things;

4. Editing and re-working your writing
 Once you have written something, the writing up process
becomes in part a process of re-writing what you have already
written;
 You will need to re-write in order to:
 bring in new ideas;
 reduce the length of what you have written;
 revise old sections;
 respond to the suggestions made by your readers;
 remove any in advertent repetitions;

5. Writing to the appropriate length
 Writing to the appropriate length is not easy;
 The need to reduce the length of what you have
written has already been mentioned as one of the
reasons for re-drafting material you have already
drafted;
 You may have a specific limit set on the number
of words and/or pages which your report or thesis
can comprise;

6. What an academic thesis or work report might look like ?
 The ‘classic’ dissertation structure is:
 Contents
 Introduction
 Data chapters or Methodology sections
 Conclusion
 References

7. Grammar, plagiarism, and referencing
 The most common failings of written-up research are
errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling, and
mistakes in referencing or in the bibliography;
 One of the easiest ways of making a good initial
impression on your readers is to ensure that your
presentation is error free;
 One thing you must avoid in writing up is committing the
sin of plagiarism, or presenting other people’s work as if it
was your own;
 This has become more common with the development of
the Internet, and the increasing and easy availability of
essays and publications online;

8. Grammar, punctuation and spelling
 Many researchers have problems with grammar,
punctuation and spelling when they are writing
up;
 Many of us may not have had a particularly good
initial education, or were more interested in other
matters at the time;
 English is not others’ first language;
 Once you begin to write up your research for
consideration and assessment, your use of
‘correct’ grammar, punctuation and spelling
becomes very important;

9.  If you are writing your research up on a
computer, you might want to make use of
the facilities which much software has for
checking your spelling and grammar;
 These can be very useful for checking
drafts, but remember that they will not
recognize many specialist words or
names, and, perhaps most importantly,
that they will often use American or
English spelling;

10. Some tips on grammar and punctuation
 Try and avoid long sentences:
 The sense of what you are saying gets lost, whereas a series of
shorter, punchy sentences can advance the argument much
better;
 Avoid one-sentence paragraphs:
 Paragraphs should contain a number of sentences on the same
subject, and then lead on to the next paragraph, which will move
the discussion on;
 Avoid beginning sentences with ‘joining’ words, such as
‘but’, ‘and’ or ‘because’:
 These should normally be used to link clauses within sentences;
 Understand and make use of the full range of standard
punctuation forms:
 Including, in particular, the colon (:), semi-colon (;), comma (,) and
full stop (.);

11. Plagiarism
 Plagiarism comes from the Latin word plagiarius,
which means kidnapper (Menager-Beeley & Paulos, 2006);
 In plain English, plagiarism is cheating;
 This occurs when the work of others, either wholly
or in part, is presented by you as your own work;
 Plagiarism means using another’s work without
giving them credit and saying that it is your own;
 Plagiarism can occur when “copying”,
“summarizing”, “paraphrasing”, or “citing” common
knowledge, facts, ideas, and/or words without
giving credit to the person from whom you got the
information;

12. Intentional vs. Unintentional Plagiarism
 Plagiarism can take two forms: intentional and unintentional
(Mundava & Garrett, 2005);
INTENTIONAL UNINTENTIONAL
• Copying and pasting parts of or a whole
webpage to submit as own;
• Downloading a paper from a web- site;
• Ordering a paper from a web- site;
• Buying a paper;
• Using another person’s paper;
• Cutting and pasting from several sources;
• Copying an article from the internet, or
from a local source;
 Paraphrasing a source without citing it;
 Failure to include works cited or a
reference page;
 Patchwork plagiarism; taking the ideas of
other writers and patching them together;

13. Why do students plagiarize?
INTENTIONAL UNINTENTIONAL
 Fear of failure;
 Poor time management skills;
 View consequences of cheating as
unimportant;
 Does not think that they would get caught;
 Does not care about the consequences;
 Lazy;
 May not know how to integrate ideas of
others and document properly;
 Teachers define plagiarism differently;
 May not know how to take notes properly;
 Students of other cultures unfamiliar with
American styles of documentation;

14. How to avoid plagiarism
When you write something that includes:
 Words;
 Opinions;
 Statistics;
 Facts;
 Information from an author or any other source, and
 Pictorial representations,
You are required to put down a footnote,
quotation marks, and/or an in-text parenthetical
reference to the author. If there is no author, then
state where you found the information.

15. How to Avoid Plagiarism…
 Use your own words
 Always give credit to the source where
you have received your information
 If you use someone’s exact words- put
them in quotes and give credit using in-
text citations. Include the source in
your references

16. How to Avoid Plagiarism…
 If you have paraphrased someone’s work, (summarizing
a passage or rearranging the order of a sentence and
changing some of the words)- always give credit
 Take very good notes- write down the source as you
are taking notes
 Avoid using someone else’s work with minor “cosmetic”
changes

17. Referencing
 One question you may face in writing up your
research is whether to include a bibliography or
just in- text references;
 A set of references contains details of all the
books, articles, reports and other works you have
directly referred to in your thesis or report;
 A bibliography contains details of all, or a selection
of, the books, articles, reports and other works or
relevance you have consulted during your
research, not all of which may be directly referred
to in your text;

18.  There are three kinds of note taking:
summarizing, paraphrasing, and quoting;
 Be sure to include exact page references for all
three types of notes, since you will need the
page numbers later if you use the information in
your paper;

19. Summarizing without plagiarizing
 A summary condenses information, perhaps reducing
a chapter to a short paragraph or a paragraph to a
single sentence;
 A summary should be written in your own words; if you
use phrases from the source, put them in quotation
marks;

20.  ORIGINAL SOURCE:
In some respects, the increasing frequency of mountain lion encounters
in California has as much to do with a growing human population as it does
with rising mountain lion numbers. The scenic solitude of the western ranges
is prime cougar habitat, and it is falling swiftly to the developer's spade.
Meanwhile, with their ideal habitat already at its carrying capacity, mountain
lions are forcing younger cats into less suitable terrain, including residential
areas. Add that cougars have generally grown bolder under a lengthy ban
on their being hunted, and an unsettling scenario begins to emerge.
Ray Rychnovsky, "Clawing into Controversy," p. 40
Summary:
Encounters between mountain Lions and humans are on the rise in
California because increasing numbers of lions are competing for a shrinking
habitat. As the lions' wild habitat shrinks, older lions force younger lions into
residential areas. These lions have lost some of their fear of humans
because of a ban on hunting (Rychnovsky 40).

21. Paraphrasing without plagiarizing
 What is it?
 How is it different to
summarising?

22.  Like a summary, a paraphrase is written in your
own words; but whereas a summary reports
significant information in fewer words than the
source, a paraphrase retells the information in
roughly the same number of words;
 A restatement of a text or passage giving the
meaning in another form, as for clearness;
 The act or process of restating or rewording;
 If you retain occasional choice phrases from the
source, use quotation marks so you will know later
which phrases are not your own;

23. Californians are encountering mountain lions more
frequently because increasing numbers of humans
and a rising population of lions are competing for the
same territory. Humans have moved into mountainous
regions once dominated by the lions, and the wild
habitat that is left cannot sustain the current lion
population. Therefore, the older lions are forcing
younger lions into residential areas. Besides, because
of a ban on hunting, these younger lions have become
bolder— less fearful of encounters with humans
(Rychnovsky 40).

24.  Develops and reinforces
understanding of the text;
 Allows comprehension of
grammatically or conceptually
complex sentences;
 Builds and reinforces
vocabulary;
Why is Paraphrasing Important?

25. Skills for Paraphrasing
2. visualise (build an image) of the sentence
1. Changing words (synonyms)
3. Re-arranging word order in sentences
4. Consider the context

26. Changing Words
Consider the following
sentence:
“Tsunamis have the power
to destroy whole coastal
settlements.”
“What is a synonym?…Do you know a
synonym for any of these words?”
“Wreck means the same as destroy”
“Villages means the same as settlements”
“Can means the same as to have the
power”
“Excellent work! So how can you re-write
this sentence?”
“Tsunamis can wreck villages by the sea.”
So visualise that sentence. What is the
picture you see?

27. Changing Word Order
Consider the following sentence:
“Because air is lighter than water, air bubbles float to the surface”
“How could you change the word order and keep the
meaning?”
Excellent work!
“Air bubbles float to the surface
because they are lighter than water”

28. Consider the context
 Students need to:
Focus on the context;
Be prepared to read
before and after the
targeted passage;

29. Using quotation marks to avoid plagiarizing
 A quotation consists of the exact words from
a source;
 In your notes, put all quoted material in
quotation marks;
 When you quote, be sure to copy the words
of your source exactly, including punctuation
and capitalization;

30. WHEN TO USE QUOTATIONS
 When language is especially vivid or
expressive;
 When exact wording is needed for
technical accuracy;
 When the words of an important authority
lend weight to an argument;

31. Rychnovsky explains that as humans
expand residential areas into mountain
ranges, the cougar's natural habitat "is
falling swiftly to the developer's spade"
(40).

32. Setting off long quotations
 When you quote more than four typed lines of prose or more than
three lines of poetry, set off the quotation by indenting it one inch
from the left margin;
 Botan and Vorvoreanu examine the role of gender in company
practices of electronic surveillance:
There has never been accurate documentation of the extent of
gender differences in surveillance, but by the middle 1990s,
estimates of the proportion of surveilled employees that were
women ranged from 75% to 85% ... . Ironically, this gender
imbalance in workplace surveillance may be evening out today
because advances in surveillance technology are making
surveillance of traditionally male dominated fields, such as
Long-distance truck driving, cheap, easy, and frequently
unobtrusive (127 ).

33. Choosing a documentation style
 The various academic disciplines use their own
editorial style for citing sources and for listing the
works that are cited in a paper.
 There are four commonly used styles:
 M. L. A. (Modern Language Association);
 A. P. A. (American Psychological Association);
 C. M. S. (Chicago Manual of Style, aka Turabian
Style);
 C. S. E. (Council of Science Editors);

34. Select a style appropriate for your discipline.
 In researched writing, sources are cited for several reasons:
 First, it is important to acknowledge the contributions of
others;
 If you fail to credit sources properly, you commit plagiarism;
 Second, choosing good sources will add credibility to your
work;
 Finally, you are helping to build knowledge by showing
readers where they can pursue your topic in greater depth;
 All of the academic disciplines cite sources for these same
reasons;
 However, the different styles for citing sources are based on
the values and intellectual goals of scholars in different
disciplines;

35. M. L. A. Citations
 The Modern Language Association
recommends a system of citations:
 The source is introduced by a signal phrase
that names its author;
 The material being cited is followed by a page
number in parentheses;
 At the end of the paper, a list of works cited
gives complete publication information about
the source;

36.  AUTHOR NAMED IN A SIGNAL PHRASE:
Frederick Lane reports that employers do not
necessarily have to use software to monitor
how their employees use the Web: employers
can "use a hidden video camera pointed at an
employee's monitor" and even position a
camera "so that a number of monitors [can] be
viewed at the same time" (147).

37.  AUTHOR NAMED IN PARENTHESES:
 If a signal phrase does not name the author,
put the author's last name in parentheses along
with the page number:
Companies can monitor employees' every
keystroke without legal penalty, but they may have to
combat low morale as a result (Lane 129).

38.  TWO OR THREE AUTHORS:
 Name the authors in a signal phrase, as in
the following example, or include their last
names in the parenthetical reference:
Kizza and Ssanyu note that "employee
monitoring is a dependable, capable, and
very affordable process of electronically or
otherwise recording all employee activities
at work" and elsewhere (2).

39.  FOUR OR MORE AUTHORS:
 Name all of the authors or include only the first
author's name followed by "et al." (Latin for
"and others");
The study was extended for two years, and
only after results were reviewed by an
independent panel did the researchers publish
their findings (Blaine et al. 35).

40.  TWO OR MORE WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR:
 If your list of works cited includes two or more works by the
same author, mention the title of the work in the signal
phrase or include a short version of the title in the
parentheses;
The American Management Association and ePolicy
Institute have tracked employers' practices in monitoring
employees' e-mail use. The groups' 2003 survey found
that one-third of companies had a policy of keeping and
reviewing employees' e-mail messages ("2003 E-mail" 2);
in 2005, more than 55% of companies engaged in e-mail
monitoring ("2005 Electronic" 1).

41.  AUTHORS WITH THE SAME LAST NAME:
 If your list of works cited includes works by two
or more authors with the same last name,
include the author's first name in the signal
phrase or first initial in the parentheses:
Estimates of the frequency with which
employers monitor employees' use of the
Internet each day vary widely (A. Jones 15).

42.  INDIRECT SOURCE (SOURCE QUOTED IN
ANOTHER SOURCE):
 When a writer's or a speaker's quoted words
appear in a source written by someone else,
begin the parenthetical citation with the
abbreviation "qtd. in."
Researchers Botan and McCreadie point
out that "workers are objects of information
collection without participating in the process of
exchanging the information . . ." (qtd. in Kizza
and Ssanyu 14).

43.  AUTHOR UNKNOWN:
 Either use the complete title in a signal phrase
or use a short form of the title in parentheses.
Titles of books are italicized; titles of articles are
put in quotation marks:
A popular keystroke logging program
operates invisibly on workers‘ computers yet
provides supervisors with details of the workers'
online activities ("Automatically").

44.  CORPORATE AUTHOR:
 When the author is a corporation, an organization, or a
government agency, name the corporate author either
in the signal phrase or in the parentheses:
According to a 2001 survey of human resources
managers by the American Management Association,
more than three-quarters of the responding
companies reported disciplining employees for
"misuse or personal use of office telecommunications
equipment" (2).

45.  MULTIVOLUME WORK:
 If your paper cites more than one volume of a
multivolume work, indicate in the parentheses
the volume you are referring to, followed by a
colon and the page number:
In his studies of gifted children, Terman
describes a pattern of accelerated language
acquisition (2: 279).

46.  TWO OR MORE WORKS:
 To cite more than one source in the
parentheses, give the citations in alphabetical
order and separate them with a semicolon:
The effects of sleep deprivation have been
well documented (Cahill 42; Leduc 114;
Vasquez 73).

47.  FICTION:
 In citing a passage from a prose, give the page
number and the part or chapter number:
Edna Pontellier, the heroine of Chopin’s
The Awakening, stands alone in triumph at the
novel’s end. In the words of the narrator, ‘How
strange and awful it seemed to stand naked
under the sky!’ (301; ch. 39).

48.  POETRY:
 For poems, give the number of division first and
then the line number. Use a period between the
two:
In ‘Song of Myself’ Whiteman emerges
larger than life itself, ‘a kosmos, of Manhattan
the son,/ Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating,
drinking, and breeding’ (24. 1-2).

49.  VERSE PLAYS:
 For verse plays, MLA recommends giving act, scene,
and line numbers that can be located in any edition of
the work. Use arabic numerals, and separate the
numbers with periods:
In Shakespeare's King Lear, Gloucester, blinded for
suspected treason, learns a profound lesson from his
tragic experience: "A man may see how this world
goes / with no eyes" (4.2.148-49).

50.  AN ELECTRONIC SOURCE (WITH OR WITHOUT PAGE
NUMBERS):
 Cite an electronic source much as you cite a print source. If you
know both the author’s name and the page number, present
both;
Using Gallup poll results from the last twenty years, Mark
Gillespie points out "critics of capital punishment contend it
unfairly targets minorities and the poor, and the American
public tend to agree" (2).
Advances in cloning research offer hope to patients with
chronic illnesses or terminal diseases (Meagher, par. 9).

51.  SACRED TEXTS:
 When citing a sacred text such as the Qur'an, name the chapter
and verse, separated by colons;
Your Guardian-Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and the
earth In six days, and is firmly established on the Throne (of
authority): He draweth the night As a veil o'er the Day, Each seeking
the other In rapid succession: He created the sun, the moon, and the
stars, (all) governed by laws under His command. is it not His to
create and to govern? Blessed be Allah, the Cherisher and Sustainer
of the worlds! Call on your Lord with humility and In private: for Allah
loveth not those who trespass beyond bounds. Do no mischief on the
earth, after it hath been set In order, but call on Him with fear and
longing (in your hearts): for the Mercy of Allah is (always) near to
those who do good (7: 54- 6).
The believers must (eventually) win through those who
humble themselves In their prayers (23: 1- 2).

52. Questions or Comments,
Please . . . .?