Technical Writing-Technical Report

Technical Writing Bahasa Inggris TNF 2441
Technical Report
The major focus of many technical writing courses is the technical report.
Just about everything you study, everything you write is geared toward
preparing you to write this final report. The early, short assignment involving
instructions or descriptions and the like give you practice using headings,
lists, notices, and graphics; in handling numbers and abbreviations; and of
course in producing good, clear, well-organized writing. If you are planning a
technical report, your job in this unit then is defining the following:
Report topic: Decide what subject you are going to write on; narrow it
as much as possible.
Report audience: Define a specific person or group of people for whom

you are going to write the report. Define the circumstances in which
this report is needed.
Report purpose: Define what the report will accomplishwhat needs of

the audience it is going to fufill.
Report type: Decide on the type of reportfor example, technical

background report, feasibility report, instructions, or some other.
Types of Technical Reports:

1. Technical-background report. The background report is the hardest to
define but the most commonly written. This type of technical report
provides background on a topicfor example, solar energy, global
warming, CD-ROM technology, a medical problem, or U.S. recycling
activity. However, the information on the topic is not just for anybody
who might be interested in the topic, but for some individual or group
that has specific needs for it and is even willing to pay for that
information.
2. Instructions. These are probably the most familiar of all the types of
reports. Students often write backup procedures for the jobs they do at
their work. Others write short user manuals for an appliance,
equipment, or program.
3. Feasibility, recommendation, and evaluation reports. Another useful
type of report is one that studies a problem or opportunity and then
makes a recommendation. A feasibility report tells whether a project is
"feasible"that is, whether it is practical and technologically possible.
A recommendation report compares two or more alternatives and
1

recommends one (or, if necessary, none). An evaluation or assessment
report studies something in terms of its worth or value.
4. Primary research report. Primary research refers to the actual work
someone does in a laboratory or in the fieldin other words,
experiments and surveys. You may have written a "lab report," as they
are commonly called, for one of your previous courses. This is a
perfectly good possibility for the technical report as well. In this type of
report, you not only present your data and draw conclusions about it,
but also explain your methodology, describe the equipment and
facilities you used, and give some background on the problem. You can
modify this type by summarizing other primary research reports.
5. Technical specifications. In this report type, you discuss some new
product design in terms of its construction, materials, functions,
features, operation, and market potential. True specifications are not
much on writingthe text is dense, fragmented; tables, lists, and
graphics replace regular sentences and paragraphs whenever possible.
Thus, specifications are not a good exercise of your writing abilities.
However, you can write a more high-level versionone that might be
read by marketing and planning executives.
6. Report-length proposal. As you may be aware, proposals can be
documents of hundreds of pages. Most of the elements are the same,
just bigger. Plus elements from other kinds of reports get imported
such as feasibility discussion, review of literature, and qualifications;
these become much more elaborate. The problem with writing a
proposal in this English class is coordinating it with the proposal you
will write at the beginning of the semester. Several students have set
up scenarios in which they proposed internally to write an external
proposal, in which they went after some contract or grant.
7. Business plans. If you are ambitious to run your own business, you can
write a business plan, which is a plan or proposal to start a new
business or to expand an existing one. It is aimed primarily at potential
investors. Therefore, it describes the proposed business, explores the
marketplace and the competition, projects revenues, and describes the
operation and output of the proposed business.
Don't feel constrained by this list; if there is a type of technical document
you want to write not listed here. It may be that we are using different
names for the same thing.

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Technical Writing Bahasa Inggris TNF 2441

Report audience: Define a specific person or group of people for whom

Report purpose: Define what the report will accomplishwhat needs of

Report type: Decide on the type of reportfor example, technical

Types of Technical Reports:

Technical Writing Bahasa Inggris TNF 2441

Technical Writing Bahasa Inggris TNF 2441

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