[Laughter] [Music] good afternoon or evening or morning depending on what time you're watching this video is I'm dr. Philip trim ovitch and I am going to be giving to you or we're going to be presenting here a number of videos that have been designed to teach a little bit about writing scientific reports in particular writing about laboratory reports or writing of laboratory reports so if you're taking the academic English for science class hopefully this will be a good review for you and help you follow the material that's in the lectures if you're thinking about taking that class or a class like it this can give you a little insight into what the class might be about and if you don't have time to take a class on writing academic reports but you have to write some you're taking a chemistry class or a physics class and you're doing experiment and you're asked to write a laboratory report what should you do hopefully if you watch these videos it will give you a basic idea of things you should think about and ways you should design those reports so that they will meet the common expectations that professors have or that scientists have for how we present information in science so there'll be a number of videos in this first video I'll be talking about the basic structure of scientific reports and laboratory reports and also the venn go into talking about paragraphs and a little bit about sentences so basic writing issues so let's get started so in this video as i said i'll be talking about basic structure of a scientific report as well as the structure and design of paragraphs so the structure of a scientific report basically scientific reports should follow a very specific way of arranging the information these methods have been developed over probably the last 100 years and have been pretty much fixed for at least half a century and it doesn't matter if you're writing in japanese or if you're writing in english or reading in French or in Spanish the approach is almost always the same across science first there's a title okay that's probably not a surprise after that it depends on if you're writing a large report or a small report usually if it's a very small report like a laboratory report for a class in college you do not need to have with known as an abstract the abstract is basically a one paragraph summary of the information in the report because laboratory reports tend to be short two three four maybe five pages there's not so much need for a summary but if you're writing an actual scientific article something to be published in a journal it's probably going to be five fifteen maybe twenty five pages long in which case summary is critical and required so depending on what situation you're in you might want to write a abstract or you might not want to or you might be required to or required not to so you'll need to check but usually for a laboratory report you do not need the abstract after that it's all pretty standard so the first part of a scientific report is the introduction okay probably not a surprise a good laboratory report a good scientific article most of the introduction is actually a literature review so it reviews what's been found before in that field or related to that field or the topic of your report then will come a new section known as either materials or materials and methods on sometimes just called method the materials and methods section on this presents what you did so you did some research you did an experiment and you're writing up a report on this what what exactly did you do the reader needs to know in order to understand what it is that they're reading that goes in the materials and methods section not in the introduction so notice that there's a very clear arrangement of information after the materials and methods section is the results section sometimes people call it the findings so you did this research or this experiment you probably measured things you counted things you tabulated things you collected data and did some analysis of it what what were the results of that analysis so that goes in the results section it does not go in the methods section it does not go in the introduction it goes in the results section okay now the results section is supposed to be completely objective you measured this here's the find it it may be it's all math maybe it's all numbers and graphs whatever it is after the results section comes another section the fourth section of the body of your writing and that's called usually the discussion some people call it the conclusion a few people call it comments but usually it's called discussion and this section is where you explain to your reader what does it mean so you've told them the background in the introduction you told them what you did in your materials in mass ejection you told them what you actually found and measured in your results section but what does it mean okay what do these numbers mean in words what does it mean that goes in the discussion section now if you're doing all this writing particularly as you're doing the introduction if you're doing it really well you're probably talking about other people's research as well so Tanaka in 1988 published an article using the same method that you used well you might talk about that in your introduction somebody else in Suzuki in 1993 maybe did a similar type of research or experiment using a slightly different method than you're using but the same basic idea trying to get at the same possible answer to learn the same thing that should we talked about in your introduction well when you mention other people's work you have to provide your reader with a list of references and that's known as a reference list so either references or reference list and this lists all the detailed information so the reader can go find those other reports so it would have things like the title of the report the names of the authors the name of the journal it was published in what page numbers it was on that type of information so that all goes in your reference list now you don't usually need anything more than this but if you have some other stuff that you want to include and it doesn't really fit in any of the above sections then you put it in what's called an appendix the plural appendices so some reports will have a ten desees at the back but usually we don't have appendices so this is the basic structure of a scientific report this could be a master's thesis or doctoral dissertation this could be an article a scientist is trying to publish and peer review international journal or this could be your taking of chemistry class so you did an experiment last Friday and you need to write it to a two-page report and submit it to your professor this coming Friday so in all cases it comes down to this structure so you're writing that means you're writing paragraphs at least hopefully it means you're writing paragraphs so what is a paragraph now hopefully you were taught this long ago and you already know but based on some things I've heard from other professors it seems that many people do not really have a clear idea of what a paragraph is a paragraph is a group of sentences that presents information on one topic and that's the key one topic a single topic if your topic is very very big and has lots of subtopics that's fine a paragraph can be on one sub topic but it's on one idea one topic one subject or just one just one not three different things in the same paragraph if you have three different things to talk about you've got three different paragraphs at least three different paragraphs so the group of sentences all in one topic and they're arranged and organized to present that information to your reader and don't forget about that the goal of writing is to create a document that somebody else will read not you somebody else not even your professor in the case of a laboratory report somebody else we'll pick this up and read this at some point in the future they need to be able to understand what it is you're writing so when you write your paragraphs and you design your paragraphs you need to stay focused on each paragraph or one idea and give support for it don't just say some potential such as true why is it true how do you know it's true I do you believe it sure what's the evidence that suggests that is true doesn't matter what it is you need support for whatever that topic that idea is now everything I've just said pretty much applies to almost any human language it applies to writing in Japanese it applies to writing in English French Spanish doesn't matter it applies to all of them so although you can structurally create a paragraph that is technically a paragraph it's formatted properly it's made up of sentences the grammar is fine it won't be a good paragraph if you do not follow this approach so good paragraphs good writing requires that you think and design each paragraph carefully and again doesn't matter what language you're working so what is the general structure well I've sort of pretty much given away what the structure is already but to make it very explicit a paragraph should have a logical structure when somebody reads the paragraph they should if not absolutely agree with you by the end of the paragraph they should at least know why you believe what you wrote that means it needs to be information there and it needs to be presented in a way that makes it easy for the reader to understand that is critical always remember you're writing for somebody else to read so where should you start you should start with the topic sentence in almost all cases in almost all languages the first sentence of the paragraph should be a topic sentence after you've oriented your reader so they now know the general direction you're heading it it might not know specifically where you're going but generally they've got an idea what you're going to talk about what you're going to present then you present to supporting information the supporting details the examples the facts the measurements the arguments whatever it is but you provide that supporting information and having oriented the reader to topic sentence and then giving the support you then as usually the last sentence of the paragraph provide a concluding sentence so draw it all together draw the conclusion from the information you get and arguments you gave on the topic you or answer your reader to with your first sentence so that's the general structure for a good paragraph do this in any language where you are writing so let's take a look at the different parts so the first part I mentioned is topic sentence so what does a topic sentence do well I've already told you this it tells the reader the main idea of the paragraph the goal is to orient your reader which which direction are you going to be going it does not need to be overly precise in fact it probably should not be too precise but it's just give the reader a general direction where are you heading with that paragraph where should you put the topic sentence well almost always the very first sentence of the paragraph should be the topic sentence it's not a rule you don't have to do this it's a guideline but I strongly urge you to follow this guideline the best writing almost always has every paragraph or nearly every paragraph has a topic sentence as the first sentence not the second sentence the first sentence it's a better writing style it makes it much easier for the readers to understand what it is you're going to be talking about before you start talking about as I already mentioned it should contain exactly one idea not two not three not four one if you mentioned two different things in your topic sentence then your readers not quite sure which direction you're going in and they'll probably figure it out as they read your supporting information on your conclusion but in order to make it easy for your reader you don't want them wandering Oh what what is it what is it that I'm being told about what am I being taught about you don't want them questioning while they're reading they should be told this is the direction I'm going and here's the information you need to know about that so for a topic sentence one and only one idea so how do you go about writing it well it takes a little bit of practice but just think about what is your main idea why are you presenting the paragraph what's the purpose of the paragraph so you're trying to present something okay what's that so think about what's your main idea and then maybe write a sentence that sort of summarizes that idea but do not write it like a conclusion the conclusion comes after you have the support the facts the findings and so on but this is a topic sentence this is just to orient your reader so think of it as sort of like a summary of the main idea but not written as a conclusion okay so first part is the topic sentence usually for a paragraph for a good paragraph after that comes supporting sentences so what do they do well they support the idea of the paragraph so what goes there well almost anything could go there it could be examples it could be facts it could be findings it could be arguments or explanations of reasoning it could be any number of things but this topic sentence gives the focus and then comes the information so this is the bulk of the paragraph will it be one sentence or ten sentences could be either or something in between one kind of short ten probably too many but it'll be a number of sentences in most cases and what it does is it will provide details that develop that support that explain what it is you're trying to say how do you about writing it well think about what are the facts what are the examples what is the reasoning that leads to the conclusion that you want to conclude in this paragraph okay think about those things and then write them as sentences so topic sentence and then multiple sentences which provide support then you come to what's usually the last sentence of your paragraph the concluding sentence so what goes into concluding sentence well the conclusion where does it go well the conclusion goes at the end so probably no real surprise here in most cases it will be the last sentence of paragraph and what will it do it can do a number of different things but most commonly it will summarize the information that you just presented so it pulls it all together it may very well also draw a conclusion from that information so you gave some facts you gave some reasoning what's the conclusion well when you write that down that's your concluding sentence so typically it's a summary or a conclusion based on those supporting information in the area specified by the topic sentence so a concluding sentence is actually kind of similar to a topic sentence but it's a conclusion and drawn based upon the facts and information and reasoning and examples that you gave in the paragraph in the body so what you're trying to do with your concluding sentence is to let your reader know the relevance of whatever it is whatever your conclusion is let them know the conclusion let them know why it's important if that's something you need to do so think about what are you trying to say with this paragraph summarize it or conclude it in your concluding sentence okay let's take a look at an example an example paragraph this one is titled my hometown it's not actually about my personal hometown but it's a nice little paragraph my hometown is famous for several amazing natural features first it is noted for the Olaf River which is very wide and beautiful also on the other side of the town is olive hill which is unusual because it is very steep the third amazing feature is the big old tree this tree stands 200 feet tall and it's probably about 600 years old these three landmarks are truly amazing and make my hometown a famous place now as you heard or read this paragraph do you see the parts you see the topic sentence do you see the supporting information do you see the conclusion do you see the structure this is what you want to be doing if you haven't seen it take a look a little bit closer we have a topic sentence my hometown is famous for several amazing natural features one topic not two topics not three topics one topic orient the reader what are the natural features topic sentence doesn't say because it's just orienting the reader it's not giving the details it's not giving the support it's just orienting the reader you give your support with the supporting sentences in this particular case we have three supporting sentences so the wide and beautiful river the unusually steep hill and the old tall tree so we have three sentences they're providing supportive information in the direction that was created by the topic sentence then is there a conclusion yes there is these three landmarks okay so reasoning is being provided a conclusion is being provided these three landmarks are truly amazing and make my hometown a famous place so you orient the reader you give support and then you draw the conclusion this is a well-designed paragraph take a look at another example this one titled my Canada there are three reasons why Canada is one of the best countries in the world first it has an excellent health care system all Canadians have access to medical services at a reasonable price seconds Canada has a high standard of education students are taught by well-trained teachers and are encouraged to continue studying at a university finally the cities are clean and efficiently managed they have many parks and lots of space for people to live as a result Canada is a desirable place to live hopefully you're now seeing the structure if this was just something in an essay that you were reading you might not be thinking analytically about the structure of the paragraphs but during this video hopefully you're now noticing the structure there's a topic sentence there are three reasons why Canada is one of the best countries in the world so the reader knows oh okay I'm probably going to be told three things and they're probably about why Canada is a wonderful place then we have the supporting sentences in this case we have six supporting sentences re supporting ideas each with two sentences one that states what it is so for example has an excellent health care system and then another sentence that explains that all Canadians have access to medical services at a reasonable price remember the goal is that your reader when they get to your conclusion will at least understand why you believe what you wrote but very possibly agree with you if you just wrote it has an excellent health care system the reader might wonder oh why what's so good about it you need to give information the goal of writing is to transmit information so here we have three ideas three supporting ideas done with six sentences ok and then not surprisingly there's a concluding sentence as a result so based upon what was just written as a result Canada is a desirable place to live so anybody who reads this paragraph will probably at least understand what the reader believes and why they believe it and they might also think yeah that's probably true so orient the reader with a topic sentence give support and then draw a logical conclusion so effective paragraphs as I've said topic sentence supporting sentences conclusion that's the way you want to go but there's a number of things you want to think about as well as you do this structure one of them is called a unity okay I've already mentioned this in a different way you want to focus on one thing and one thing only so if you need to talk about three different things that's fine but that's three different paragraphs okay so figure out even if it's going to be only a five sentence paragraph which is kind of a short for a paragraph but you're gonna have three of them that's fine it's not a problem in most situations usually you don't have the problem of it needs to be shorter that can come up sometimes you're given a limit write an essay and with a maximum of a certain number of words but generally speaking more paragraphs is usually not a problem if it clearly presents the information so one paragraph one idea coherence a is the another aspect of good paragraphs so basically this is you've presented things in a logical way so that your reader will agree with you or at least understand why you believe what you believe so you need to give them all the information they need in the order in which they need need it in order to understand it okay and very importantly sufficient development if you're going to assert that Canada is a great place to live you better to give more than one example of a reason you know one example is not going to convince very many people so think about development whatever your idea is what's the information the reader needs to know to really agree with you and understand your conclusion so sufficiently develop your topic give examples give facts provide measurements provide explain the reasoning that you're actually using these types of things all go in there in the support section of the paragraph in the middle of the paragraph develop it sufficiently so that your conclusion makes sense to your reader now let me turn to another detail sort of a boring detail but it's nevertheless an important one and that is formatting now almost everything I've said up to this point applies to all languages so if you're writing in Japanese everything I just said applies Jerry in English it applies if you're writing for science or not for science doesn't matter it applies but when it comes to formatting there are differences between different languages and even within the language things might be different in certain situations so for example you probably don't write the same way in an email as you do in an essay for school so need to think about these things let me talk a little bit about paragraph formatting in case of English English paragraphs should be indented by one point 27 centimeters unless you're told otherwise this is standard pretty much across all english-speaking countries and has been the case I don't really know but probably for more than a hundred years the 1.27 you might think very very weird number of this is one half so this was pre metrics and for non-metric countries it's a half of an inch so 1.27 is considered ideal for when you're writing in English if you're of course instructed otherwise just sometimes notice me put say this in a video or in a talk obviously if you've been given instructions on how to do something you should follow those instructions okay but when you don't know and you're writing an english first line of a paragraph indented by one point 27 centimeters now how do you do that well because this is so common almost all word processes when you install them in a computer they are set so that the first cab point so if you hit the tab key the cursor jumps forward a bit where does it jump to almost all word processes are set to one point 27 centimeters for those tab stops so and what most people do is you open up your doc your blank document hit the tab key and then start typing your paragraphs when you get to the end of your paragraph you hit return hit the tab key for you to start your next paragraph and you end up with one point 27 centimeters you can also use special formatting options in your word processor to do this for you I prefer the tab method but some people prefer having a word processor do it either is fine but whichever you do I strongly urge you I'll do that the same throughout your document be consistent because if you use tabs for part of your report and you use paragraph formatting options for the other part of your report they might not align quite perfectly and that inconsistency will drive some readers crazy and if it's going to a professor who's giving you a grade you do not want to drive them crazy when they're grading your paper so do you think about what you're going to do tabs or using paragraph formatting now regarding the case of indenting the indentation of that first line tells the reader new paragraph that's what it means that's what the formatting means so you don't need to do anything else specifically you should not put a blank line in between your paragraphs so if you're indenting your paragraph you do not put a blank line now if you're writing email lots of email programs have tabs or tab to look funny when you use them so an email will often use no tabs and put a blank line but that's not a formal type of writing in all formal writing in English you should probably be tabbing the first line of the paragraph and have no blank lines in between the paragraphs so as I said email probably an exception for most people ok now another thing to think about is the justification justification refers to how the words are arranged or stretched out so that the margins so that the edges the right hand vertical edge the left hand vertical edge are they straight or are they jagged so what you're looking at right now this bottom pair is bottom sentence here is what's called fully justified so in full justification you have a straight left edge and you have a straight right edge many people think oh that looks so professional it looks like a newspaper or a magazine or a book and they want to do this but in fact in almost all English writing you are not supposed to do this this is only done by the publishers themselves so for example I as a scientist if I write a manuscript and I want to publish as an article when I send it to the publisher it looks like it now does here left justified so straight vertical left-hand edge but the right edge jagat called left justification everything is up against the left you should always use left justification unless there's a really good reason not to so for example if your professor really likes fully justified that's a good reason to use it in that class but in general use left justification ok this is also important for proofreading because if you use full justification you won't be able to tell if you have extra spaces in between words or if your word processor has temporarily inserted spaces in order to create that full justification effect so you cannot actually proof read a document well that's fully justified but in any case you probably should be using less justification anyway great a few notes about clarity brevity so being short being concise precision and being objective ok so in scientific writing generally it's true as well but specifically for scientific writing you want to write as clearly and as simply as possible okay so do not add extra stuff if it does not help your reader now if it helps your reader then you should use it okay but don't put in other things just because you could so you measured something and in your experiment but the reader probably won't care don't put it in because you feel like but I measured it I want to put it in my report if the reed is not going to care don't put it in so include the things that they would expect include the things they need also be as precise as accurate as focused as possible okay that helps people really understand your reasoning and why you believe what you believe why you drew the conclusion that you drew very important for science not important in many other areas of writing but for scientific writing you need to be objective okay so basically no emotion you don't get to express how happy or how sad you are about the results of your experiment or your research you also definitely should not exaggerate that you know you solve this huge problem unless of course you really did solve some huge problem so some people might be really excited about their research and they might write something like this experiment conclusively shows that well you know did it really did it really conclusively show something probably not even research by Nobel laureates usually does not prove anything it supports but it usually does not prove so probably you should write something along the lines of taken as a whole these findings suggest such and such okay or maybe perhaps these results support the idea that some of them the conclusively shows proves proven these words a little bit too strong or maybe a lot too strong for most faces so think objectively what did you really find what did you really show the emotionally neutral about it whether you're happy or sad about it inside in your writing be as neutral as possible okay let's take a look at a perfect paragraph okay what would a perfect paragraphs be perfect paragraphs would have a topic sentence that states clearly without examples what it is the paragraph is about it Orient's the reader then all the sentences in between the first and last provide the findings the analyses the examples whatever it is the supporting information and then the last sentence as has been mentioned would draw the conclusion or summarize the information from the paragraph one possibility is it might also act as a transition into the next paragraph but usually a conclusion or summary as far as the length how long should a paragraph be generally it should be more than one sentence long one sentence paragraphs when people read them they think oh this was written by or written for junior high school students keeping it really really easy so it's a bad idea to have one sentence paragraph I myself have probably written a few in my life but basically you do not want to write one sentence paragraph as far as what's too long what's too big there's no specific rule but you probably do not want to have very many paragraphs that have more than 300 words that's approximately an a4 page with double spacing so if you're have a single paragraph and it's covering more than an entire page of double spaced page then it's probably too long not necessarily but probably so take a look at it and think can you break it down into two sub topics or Sri subtopics so in terms of the length how long's your paragraph be definitely more than one sentence but probably not more than about three hundred or maybe 350 words so those are some of the ideas some of the thoughts that I want to share with you in this video on paragraph writing on the structure of a scientific report I hope you find this helpful and I hope before the videos the other videos in this series to also be helpful for your writing so right well