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科技论文写作英语写作
Research Reports for
Business and Technical Writing
Wayne Losano
A
surprising
amount
of
one's
time
as
a
student
and
professional
is
spent
reporting the results of one's research projects
for presentation
to
teachers,
managers,
and
clients.
Indeed,
without
basic
research
skills
and
the
ability
to
present
research
results
clearly
and
completely,
an
individual
will
encounter
many
obstacles
in
school
and
on
the
job.
The
need
for
some
research-writing
ability
is
felt
nearly
equally
by
college
students
in
all
fields,
engineering
and
science as well as business and the
humanities. Graduate study often
makes
great
demands
on
the
student's
research-writing
skills,
and
most
professions
continue
the
demand;
education,
advertising
and
marketing,
economics
and
accounting,
science
and
engineering,
psychology,
anthropology,
the
arts,
and
agriculture
may all
require
regular reporting of
research data.
ELEMENTS OF THE RESEARCH PAPER
The standard research report,
regardless of the field or the intended
reader, contains four major sections.
These sections may be broken
down into
a variety of subsections, and they may be arranged
in a
variety of ways, but
they regularly make up the core of the report.
Problem Section.
The first required section of a
research
report is the statement of the
problem with which the research
project
is concerned.
This
section
requires
a
precise
statement
of
the
underlying
question
which
the
researcher
has
set
out
to
answer.
In
this
same
section
there
should
be
an
explanation
of
the
significance
-
social,
economic, medical, psychological,
educational, etc. - of the question;
in
other words, why the investigation was worth
conducting. Thus, if
we set out, for
example, to answer the question
regular
consumption
of
fast
foods
on
the
health
of
the
American
teenager?
we
must
explain
that
the
question
is
thought
to
have
significant relevance to the health of
this segment of the 'population
and
might lead to some sort of regulations on such
foods.
A frequent subsection of this
problem section is a
review
of past
research
on
the
topic
being
investigated.
This
would
consist
of
summaries
of
the
contributions
of
previous
researchers
to
the
question
under
consideration
with
some
assessment
of
the
value
of
these
contributions. This subsection has rhetorical
usefulness in that
it
enhances
the
credibility
of
the
researcher
by
indicating
that
the
data presented is based
on a thorough
knowledge of what has
been
done
in
the
field
and,
possibly,
grows
out
of
some
investigative
tradition.
Procedures
Section.
The second major
section of the research
report details,
with as much data as possible, exactly how the
study
was
carried
out.
This
section
includes
description
of
any
necessary
equipment, how the subjects were
selected if subjects were used, what
statistical
technique
was
used
to
evaluate
the
significance
of
the
findings,
how
many
observations
were
made
and
when,
etc.
An
investigation
of
the
relative
effectiveness
of
various
swim-strokes
would
have
to
detail
the
number
of
swimmers
tested,
the
nature of
the
tests
conducted,
the
experience
of
the
swimmers,
the
weather
conditions
at
the
time
of
the
tests,
and
any
other
factors
that
contributed
to
the
overall
experiment.
The
goal
of
the
procedures
section is to
allow the reader to duplicate the experiment if
such were
desired to confirm, or
refute, your findings.
Results
Section.
The
third,
and
perhaps
most
important,
section
of
the
research
report
is
the
presentation
of
the
results
obtained
from
the
investigation.
The
basic
rule
in
this
section
is
to
give
all
data
relevant
to
the
research
question
initially
asked.
Although, of course,
one's natural tendency might be to suppress any
findings
which
do
not
in
some
way
support
one's
hypothesis,
such
dishonesty
is
antithetical
to
good
research
reporting
in any
field.
If
the
experiments
undertaken
fail
to
prove
anything,
if
the
data
was