A report on a student meeting

Learn how to write a report.

Do the preparation task first. Then read the text and tips and do the exercises.

Preparation

Reading text

Improvements to Oak Hall

Introduction

This report aims to describe problems in Oak Hall of Residence and discuss possible maintenance work to solve them. The two biggest issues were discussed at a meeting on 12 May, which was attended by 165 of the 250 students who live in the building.

Issue 1: temperature in rooms

A number of students complained that the second-floor bedrooms are too hot. Concerns were raised about lack of sleep and students finding it hard to study in their rooms. Air conditioning was suggested as a possible solution.

However, there is no budget left for installing air conditioning this academic year. Also, installation can only be carried out during holidays as students cannot be present in the building while the work takes place.

Issue 2: improving wheelchair access to Oak Café

It was noted that wheelchair users can only access Oak Café from the back and not the front entrance nearer the lifts. This makes access to the café difficult for wheelchair users. The university is looking to improve its wheelchair access in general by installing ramps in key areas and work can take place during term time with no issues for staff or students.

Conclusion and recommendations

Taking the factors mentioned into account, August would be the best time for the installation of air conditioning. Until then, the university could consider supplying fans to each second-floor room so students can sleep and study comfortably.

The front of the café is recommended as an ideal place to install a wheelchair ramp. This work can take place immediately and should be a priority.

Tips

Start with the aim of the report and say where the information comes from.
Use subheadings to make the layout clear. Follow a logical structure, e.g.:
- Introduction
- The problem(s) (Give each issue a separate section)
- Conclusion and recommendations
Assume the person reading the report has asked you to write it and needs only a brief introduction to the situation.
Use an impersonal, formal style.
Use the passive to keep the focus off individual people:
Concerns were raised about ...
... was suggested ...
You should also use objective language for recommendations and conclusions:
... would be the best …
the university could consider ...
... is recommended ...

Discussion

Have you ever had to write a report? What for?

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B1 Intermediate

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I wrote many reports , as an electrical maintenance engineer, we sometimes encounter faults and defects so after repairing these faults , we made what is called failure investigation report in which we state the problem we faced , and steps of work we made to find solution to problem , this act as a reference for equipment and a quick fix if we face similar problem

Could you please answer this question for me Tanta is the place ........Mohamed Salah came from. (where_that_which_when)

where

I usually have to report meetings at my work. Now I think it will be easier with these tips. Here, people usually use personal phrases, although I say them to be impersonal

I had to write many reports for explaining the results of the meetings in which I had taken part. I was starting these reports specifying title, place, date, time and attendees; then I was reporting speeches of every participant.

Improvements to my writing skills Introduction This report aims to describe problem with my written English and discuss possible improvement. Issue 1: Lack of vocabulary A lack of vocabulary makes my report monotonous, and the sentence form duplicated. Frequent wronging spell were also a outstanding problem. Issue 2: Reply on dictionary Reliance on dictionary less the self thinking time on acquired knowledge. And the author didn't form the habit to review the vocabulary or sentence which have been searched in the dictionary, which makes the use of dictionary inefficient. Conclusion and recommendations It is suggested grasp more vocabulary precisely and review grammar from now on. British council is recommended to improve English skills. Regarding issue 2, it is suggested to review the search result every week. And try to reduce the use of dictionary.

due to my work, I write a lot of report during the day. I'm journalist and its common in my work. I'm used to writing focused on highlighting what is most important. The aim of the test it must to be mentioned in the first line. My recommendation is, to make a list of the important issues. That it!

Yes, I write a lot of reports due to the nature of my job. The last report was on the activities carried out on workers day.

From this session, I am very happy to know the useful way for writing a report. In particaluar, I could learn that passive sentencs are more frequent for the type of report. And also the fact that inpersonal expression should be used in a way of expressing an pupose of the report is very useful to me. I really appreciate if someome correct my poor sentence since I just start an English writing recently. Thank you.

Hello minjulu,

I'm glad you found our material helpful, and well done on making progress in your writing.

I'm afraid we can't correct users' posts. We're a small team here and there are many thousands of users on the site. We simply don't have the time to offer a correction service like that.

Peter

The LearnEnglish Team