Introduction

With this Technical Report Writing training course, you will gain the essential skills of producing technical reports of which you can be proud.

Technical reports often present complex information to non-specialists. Their effectiveness depends as much on the quality of the writer’s ideas as on the accuracy of their information. An effective technical report displays complicated information in ways that make it easy to understand, and – above all – relevant to the reader.

You will learn how to construct coherent arguments and explanations, and how to present information to support them. We shall look at how to offer complex material to support managerial and strategic decision-making. We shall work on how to make language work for us, and how to make reports look as good as they read.

Throughout the course, we shall work directly with participants’ own reports. Working in English as a second or further language will be a reference theme throughout.

Course Objectives

You will learn how to:

• Write more efficiently

• Understand the functions of different kinds of technical reports, especially evaluations and proposals

• Adapt and focus the writing on the needs of the target audience

• Organise material effectively to support explanations and arguments

• Create effective summaries and introductions – and clearly understand the difference between the two

• Improve your style on three levels: paragraph, sentence, word

• Make your reports easier to navigate

Target Audience

• Engineers and technical professionals

• Project managers and supervisors

• Analysts and consultants

• Administrative and reporting staff

• Researchers and academic professionals

• Professionals required to prepare reports, proposals, or technical documentation

• Non-native English speakers working in technical or professional environments

Course Outlines

Day 1: Foundations of Effective Technical Reports

• What makes reports work?
• Functions of reports
• What makes a report effective?
• Overt messages and hidden messages
• Key principles of functional writing
• Three key factors: objectives, audience, structure
• Time management: a structural approach to writing
• Practical work: critique of a range of examples of text

Day 2: Planning and Structuring Reports

• Reports as functional documents
• Planning your material
• Making sense of complexity
• Getting to the point: summarising and grouping
• Chunking and sequencing: core planning techniques
• SPQR: a technique for introductions
• Explain or persuade?
• Six modes of explanation
• Persuasion in three dimensions
• Logic: deductive and inductive

Day 3: Building Strong Content and Outlines

• Creating an outline
• Key features of an effective outline
• Checking for coherence and sense
• Producing the outline
• Practical work: participants plan, write, critique, and rewrite an outline
• From outline to draft

Day 4: Presenting and Designing Reports

• Essential apparatus of reports
• Summaries, introductions, appendices
• Navigation aids
• Presenting information graphically: tables, charts, algorithms
• Practical work: short exercises on key techniques

Day 5: Editing, Style, and Finalization

• Editing on three levels
• Constructing effective paragraphs
• Four characteristics of effective paragraphs
• Paragraph structure and sequences
• Bringing sentences under control
• Sentence length and structure
• Sentence sequences
• Bringing your sentences to life
• Words that work
• Finding and placing key words
• Developing your style
• Managing vocabulary, jargon, and specialist terminology
• Attention to detail: typos, spelling, punctuation
• The elements of good style
• Composition and the writer’s position
• Bringing your writing to life
• Formal or informal: judging what’s appropriate
• Practical work on existing pieces of writing, applying the tools and techniques covered