AN AUTHORITATIVE GUIDE TO TECHNICAL REPORT WRITING FOR STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITIES OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY AND AGRICULTURE

Abstract

A report is a spoken or written account of what one has observed, heard, or diligently investigated. It is an account of body of facts on a situation that occurred in the past. It aims to give a straightforward account of an issue, answer a question, offer solutions to a problem or recommend an action; it can be formal or informal. A formal report is written after studying or investigating a specific issue or phenomenon. In this category includes progress report, feasibility studies, field trips, recommendation studies and laboratory reports termed as technical report. Technical report is written by science and technology students in Universities of Technology and Agriculture during their period of studentship in the form of seminars, long projects, dissertations or theses. Through these, student give firsthand report of experimental works, observations from field work, feasibility studies, review activities already carried out and discuss possible solutions to them. The importance of these reports notwithstanding, experience has shown that students still encounter the problem of differentiating between writing technical report and other kinds of reports, particularly with respect to use of language, organization and format of the report. The present article therefore, presents an authoritative step-by-step guide to technical report writing for students of Universities of Science, Technology and Agriculture in Nigeria. The article examined in greater depth the grammatical features such as the use of specialized vocabulary, their organizational features such as topical arrangement and uniqueness of style and made practical suggestions on how teachers of English as a second language and students ‘Supervisors can tackle the problem of poor report writing headlong by highlighting potential problem areas to focus on during remedial instruction.