Reports

The following is a report analysis. The report should have been from the Department of Hydrological Services to the Head of Hydrology in the Ministry of Agriculture. It covered five aspects, namely, terms of reference, procedures, findings, conclusion and recommendations. The layout was clear and well-structured.

The introduction which covers nine lines is written in two sentences, leading to run- on sentences. The student does not know how to make a statement from a question. For

example, “to educate the general public regarding the problems caused by drought and report back on how the public reaction did” should be “how the public reacted.” Most of the sentences are in the passive form which is correctly used. Subject and verb agreement mistakes are found, such as ‘the country have’ instead of the ‘country has’. Another grammatical mistake is ‘people haven’t cultivate.’

This is a report which is an official letter and should be written as such. Therefore the use of the short form is not acceptable and the phrase is also wrong in itself. The sentence should read ‘people have not cultivated their field early because it did not rain’. The language used is fairly cohesive while sentences are generally clear. No many misspelled words and derivational morphemes were found.

The other task was to explain different steps in report writing. The student did not put a comma after the linking word before continuing with the rest of the sentence. The following sentence is an explanation of a step which is one sentence and grammatically wrong. “You

need to put the right information in the right place because people are use to having certain information as the headlines since they are important than have matters which are less important in the middle and last have matters which are not that important.”

The sentence is not clear and the phrase ‘people are use to having’ is wrong. It should be ‘people are used to have.’ The phrase “are use” is wrong it should be “are used.” The following sentence is wrong: “these is were the background is sketched and also why

the report is important”. Firstly, the sentence begins with a small letter. Secondly the subject

‘these’ does not agree with the verb ‘is.

The way the word ‘were’ (which is a verb) is used is wrong. It should be used to mean ‘in what place that is ‘where’. Also, ‘we’ as the subject of the sentence does not agree with ‘goes’ as a verb in the sentence. The student had a referral problem. This is shown in the following sentence: “Here we have the facts and goes in detail as to what you have

discovered about the problem”. The word ‘we’ does not agree with ‘goes’ while at the

same time ‘you’ is not referred back to ‘we.’

The students were asked to explain every step in writing a report. Under ‘recommendation’, one student explained what needs to be done. The explanation was done in the form of a

question “what do you suggest should be done”. This is a question and needs a question mark at the end. The student was supposed to write a statement like this: ‘what you suggest should be done.’

Many sentences could have been written in passive form but the student wrote them in active form. Sentences are generally clear but the language use is rather ordinary. At this level, the student should have avoided making simple mistakes with respect to subject and verb agreement and making statements instead asking of questions. The last task was on memorandum writing. This practical memorandum writing was from the chief executive officer to the staff of the company. It was about a complaint from customers about the lack of good customer service in the company. It was written in six paragraphs and its format was clear. In the introduction, there is a wrong sentence which read: “Ifeel it is not

good for these customers are the reason we are succeeding”. Firstly, the sentence does not

make sense. The first part of the sentence is in complete. There should be a reason given after the word ‘customers’ as a sentence on its own. Another sentence on the justification of the company’s success should have followed. The student wrote these two ideas in one sentence and it became a run-on sentence. Secondly, the student also had problems when it came to the splitting of words, for example ‘Ifeel and forgranted’. One wonders whether this was due to carelessness or poor knowledge of writing. Words that were misspelled were also found. For example, interupt/interrupt, attentivily/attentively. There was nothing wrong with subject and verb agreement. Possessive form was well applied but the student opted to write sentences in active rather than passive form. Also, the use of the progressive form was not found.

Overall, the content was satisfactory and sentences were generally clear. The only problem with this student was that she/he made simple mistakes such as with respect to the splitting of words. One wondered how these students were taught business writing skills which would help them to communicate effectively with such poor English proficiency!