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Articles
HINTS AND TIPS
FOR STUDENTS FOR WRITING PROJECT REPORTS, FYP REPORTS
AND THESES.
Major Hint:-
You should be able to read a report from all the graphs, diagrams, tables, photographs and pictures just like reading a comic book (albeit a serious comic book!) without reading any of the text. The text is for reading about the report in more detail.
1. Do not write
any text at first.
2. Don’t discipline your mind to
do what you think are "first things first" because it
will take time for your mind to order itself. You
can work this out later. It’s important to catalyse and
activate the brain in the first instance so as to get
it in the right mood.
3. Instead make a list of anything
that comes to mind that you have to do. Don’t in
any way restrict your mind. Write down anything, no matter
how crazy, that comes to mind that concerns the report.
You can amend the list and put it in order later. As soon
as you can’t think of any more things then get going with
the interesting things first which are:-
4. Make a pictorial presentation
by plotting all graphs, drawing all diagrams, tabulating
all tables, taking all photographs, and sketching (neatly)
all pictures. This will take up quite a lot of
time, but don’t worry, the writing will be easy and quick.
As you are working on the pictorial presentation your
mind will think of other things to do and write about
so add these things to your list.
5.Make sure that you take a lot of trouble to make all
your graphs, diagrams, tables, etc. very easy to read
and self-contained so can read the pictorial presentation
like a comic book and still get the meaning across.
Remember that all comic books have simple explanatory
words and phrases for each visual presentation so make
sure your report is similar. Your pictorial presentation
must not be bare. There must be plenty of descriptive
labels and arrows pointing to things. Don’t always use
the computer for drawings. Instead create neat hand-drawn
diagrams. When you have finished the pictorial presentation
then arrange each page into a logical, chronological,
or other, order of your choice.
6. You are now ready for writing
the text of the report. You now simply pick up
the first page of the pictorial presentation and start
writing about the contents of it. If you have to take
more than one page of writing for each page of pictorial
presentation then you haven’t created enough pages for
your pictorial presentation. In general you should have
a 1-to-1 ratio of text pages to pictorial presentation
pages.
7. Make sure you are very disciplined
about referring to words and phrases between the text
and the pictorial presentation. If the pictorial
presentation talks about "motor output torque" then you
should use that exact phrase in the text and vice versa.
For example it is confusing to use one phrase as "motor
output torque" and another phrase, referring to the same
thing, as "motor torque" or "output motor torque". Once
you have decided on a word or phrase then don’t modify
it.
8. DO NOT EXCEED 3 SIGNIFICANT
FIGURES unless you are carrying out precision experiments
or calculations. I note that most students do not
know the difference between 3 dec places and 3 sig figs.
They are not the same (unless coincidentally).
9. The Abstract for your report
should not exceed one page and is a short form description
of your report. You have to encapsulate everything you
have described in your report into one page!! Make
sure you use past passive tense, eg, "The motor was tested
on a dynamometer and the results showed that a maximum
power of 210watts was produced".
NOTE to Chinese students:- The Chinese language does not have a grammatical system like that of European Latin based languages. Hence it is tough for Chinese students to get the hang of writing in English. In comparison, German or Polish students, I think, will find English refreshingly simplified when it come to grammar (but not so for the pronunciation).
Chinese does not have the indefinite article "a", the definite article, "the" and the plural noun e.g. catS, dogS. If you are a Chinese speaker chances are that you are oblivious to the pain caused to the native English speaker. I will give you an example. I can speak almost no Mandarin but I have a smattering of Cantonese but I know they are similar in construction. If I were to say "one table" in Cantonese I would say "yat jeung toy" where "yat" means "one", "toy" means "table" and "jeung" is the collective prefix for "toy" meaning "flat objects". In English, when you leave out the article or the "s" denoting plural it is like me leaving out the "jeung" and it will sound to your Chinese ear so wrong. I can have the attitude of saying "well we don't have this collective prefix in English so I'm not going to use it, I'm going to say "yat toy" for "one table" and I don't care". Wow, what bad and lazy attitude.
Not using the article or plural to a native English speaker, after some time, becomes irritating because we have three choices, which are (i) if you can't beat them then join them and start talking in Chinglish or Singlish like the locals or (ii) ignore the local vernacular or (iii) constantly correct the locals.
Choice (i) is unacceptable to me because the English language is sophisticated, like other languages and has evolved over a long period of time to express concepts accurately. To debase the grammar is to take away the accuracy of the language.
Choice (ii) I try to when it comes to speech but when you have to suffer the grammatical mistakes in writing then it's like walking in soft sand on the beach....extremely tiresome, slow and hard work.
Choice (iii) This is too tiresome so you just grin and bear it.
Students can say "why you want say "three carS" when you already know that "car" is plural" so why you not say "three car". The reply is that European languages have developed redundancy in order to increase the robustness and accuracy of meaning. If you say "three car" it could imply "number three car" or an adjective with the noun missing for example "three-car accident". So this is a case in point. You qualify words and phrases to decrease the ambiguity. The same goes for articles. All native English speakers, before they open their mouths, think about whether an object that they are about to describe is non-specific ( "a car"), specific ("the car"), or general ("cars"). As far as I can see the Chinese mind doesn't think this way.
Students might also say "why you say "I am, you are, he is, we are, they are" why you not say " I am, you am, he am, we am, they am" why English so crazy language?" Well it's, once again, redundancy which decreases the ambiguity and strengthens the meaning and accuracy of the language. The English speaking ear likes to hear one "s" in a sentence. For example "the car moveS fast" or "the carS move fast", but "the carS moveS fast" is wrong and so is "the car move fast" (common mistake by students). Take note you should feel just a little fortunate because try learning German which has many more grammatical rules than English, for example "der", "die" and "das", all of which mean "the".
The Cantonese that I have learnt has to be spoken with the right tone otherwise it's difficult to be understood. So if you don't use the English grammar correctly then it's a similar situation. Sometimes I give up trying to understand Singlish because the speaker is not putting in any effort to be understood so I switch off.
So students please put in some effort with the grammar. The grammar is there for accuracy.
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