Unit 2

Section A. Determining the scope of the report and Considering the target audience

Theory

A frequent mistake of many business reports is that the author makes the scope (purpose) of a report too general or vague. As most business reports are required to support specific organizational objectives, strategies and decision making it is critical that a chain of continuity in argument and evidence can be demonstrated between the purpose of the report, the research, and ultimately the solutions, findings or recommendations. The stronger this continuity the greater the weight the report will have in supporting the decision making process. When you chose a focus for your report, one of the first steps is to narrow the scope to a report length.

СибАДИ• knowledge of the report’s topic;

The scope of the report is defined by determining the factors that will be studied.

Always consider the business reports alignment with the intended audience. Business reports usually have a number of different audience groups to reach so a report will often have a hierarchical structure to support different levels of detail. Many people may be involved in a decision making process and they will have different levels of information requirements to support their decision making process. In designing the report format and style the following target audience

characteristics should be considered:

• their need for the report;

• educational level (ability to understand);

• position in organization;

• responsibility to make decisions based on the report;

• personal demographics (age, biases, alliances, attitudes).

To avoid making false assumptions about the target audience the author should compile a list of all the intended readers and develop a profile of them.

Audiences are basically of three kinds:

• primary audience – people who have to make decisions on the basis of the business report;

• secondary audience – people who are effected by the actions the Primary Audience would take in response to the position of the business report;

• immediate audience – people responsible for examining the business report, weighting its viability and distributing the report to a broader audience.

In determining if a number of versions of reports are required with varying levels of evidence, the author should consider the following audience decision making needs:

•How much background (supporting factual data, analytical findings, solutions and recommendations) will the audience need?

•Do they need to define any terms being used within the report (if so

ensure they are included in Explanation Terms or Glossary)?

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•What language level (technical complexity) will be most appropriate for the target audience?

•What will the target audiences expect from the business report?

•Does the reader prefer everything given in detail or merely a brief presentation that touches upon the highlights?

Questions:

1.What is the most frequent mistake in business report?

2.What should business report support?

3.What strategy should we avoid making business report?

4.What is the first step after determining the focus of the business report?

5.How is the scope of the report defined?

6.What should be considered in designing of the report format and style?

7.What types of audience do you know? What is the difference between them?

Section B. Famous Inventors

Reading

1.Read the text and define:

a)the theme of the report;

b)the idea of the report (the aim);

c)the scope of the report;

d)primary, secondary and immediate audience;

e)style of the report.

2.Give another variants of the aim of the report with the theme «Leonardo da Vinci».

3.Choose one and describe the scope of your report according to your aim.

4.Write down a plan of your report.СибАДИ

LEONARDO DA VINCI

Leonardo da Vinci was a Renaissance man. He painted, sculpted, dissected bodies, designed buildings...he pursued knowledge and self–enlightenment in a multitude of ways. This short biography provides a brief overview of his life and main contributions. Leonardo da Vinci was born April 15, 1452 in Anchiano, near Vinci, Italy, and died May 2, 1519 in Cloux, France. His father, Ser Piero, was a respected Florentine businessman. His mother, Caterina,was a peasant women. Ser

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Piero's parents did not consider Caterina a worthy catch, so Ser Piero and Caterina remained unmarried. Caterina later married someone of her own station.

The kindly Ser Piero treated Leonardo as a legitimate son. But, although Ser Pieroprovided Leonardo with an excellent education, Leonardo did not reveal outstanding abilities as a child.

At the age of fifteen, Leonardo da Vinci was apprenticed to the artist Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence. Leonardo worked there for fourteen years. Many pen Сand pencil works remain from this period, including technical sketches of pumps, weapons, and other mechanical objects. Leonardo started to get good commissions, including the Adoration of the Magi for the monastery of San Donato a Scopeto.

But this, and other commissions, were left unfinished when he moved to Milan. иAt the age of thirty, Leonardo da Vinci moved to Milan to work for Duke Ludovico. He spent seventeen years there, until Ludovico fell from power in 1499. Leonardo acted as a technical advisor to Ludovico in fields as diverse as architecture, weaponry, hydraulics and engineering. But Leonardo's goals at this time tendedбto be grandiose and boundless, and much work remained unfinished.

Fortunately for us, Leonardo managed to complete The Last Supper for the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie, and the The Virgin of the Rocks for the Milanese Confraternity of the Immaculate Conception. But the twelve years Leonardo devoted to creating a monumental bronze statue of a horse were less successful. He createdАthe clay model for the horse, but just before the bronze was to be poured it was diverted to making war cannons. Then Ludovico fell, and the clay model was destroyed in the ensuing war. With the French marching into Milan, Leonardo celebrated the new century by returning home. In January 1500 he left Milan, spent a few months in Mantua and Venice, and then returned to the scene of his apprentice years, Florence.Д

In Florence, Leonardo da Vinci concentrated on mathematical studies before, after two years, taking a ten month break to work for Cesare Borgia. There he invented new cartographic techniques while mapping Borgia’s territories. He also met Nicholas Machiavelli, no doubt picking up some good tips for dealing with high officials! И

During this second period in Florence, Leonardo worked on many grand projects. These included plans for a canal to the sea, and a monumental mural in the central square. But the canal remained only a plan, and the mural was never completed. He did, however, complete the Mona Lisa during this time.

Also during this second period in Florence, Leonardo da Vinci became especially interested in science, his main impetus being simply to see what was there. His genius enabled him to look deeply into nature–– his artistic vision became a superb tool for detailed scientific investigation.

Art and science combined in his investigations of the human form, which (like everything else he did) was pursued to its limits. He performed dissections in the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, and provided a comprehensive account of the structure and function of the human body. Leonardo studied various other natural phenomena, from the flight of birds to the movements of currents, and created vast collections of data pertaining to them.

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СибАДИDesign for a flying machine

King Louis XII of France greatly admired Leonardo da Vinci. After requests from Charles d'Amboise, the French governor in Milan, Leonardo returned to Milan in 1508. Leonardo's advice was sought mainly on architectural matters, but his own interests centered on science. His experiments in anatomy proceeded quickly with the collaboration of Marcantonio della Torre, an anatomist from Pavia. Leonardo also continued with botanical, mathematical, optical, mechanical, and geological studies. Leonardo became convinced that basic mechanical forces produced all organic and inorganic forms, and that they operated in accordance with orderly, harmonious laws. So Leonardo was one of the first to outline a fully scientific vision of nature and the physical universe.

In 1513 the French were forced to leave Milan, and Leonardo da Vinci moved to Rome. He hoped to find employment through his patron Giuliano de Medici, brother of the pope. Giuliano gave Leonardo rooms in his residence, the Belvedere in the Vatican, and a considerable monthly wage. But the competition was fierce. Donato Bramante was building St. Peter's; Rome was full of young talent. Leonardo could get no commissions and stuck to mathematical studies, experiments, and investigating Rome’s monuments. Feeling underemployed, in 1516, Leonardo accepted the invitation of King Francis I to serve in France and left Italy forever.

The last three years of Leonardo’s life were spent in Cloux (now Clos– Lucé), near the king's summer palace at Amboise on the Loire. Leonardo spent most of his time working on scientific manuscripts and studying anatomy. In a final work, Visions of the End of the World, or Deluge, he depicts the primal forces that rule nature with a growing pessimism. Leonardo died at Cloux and was buried in the church of Saint–Florentin

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Leonardo da Vinci had an unlimited desire for knowledge, and visual perception was the main tool he used in pursuit of that knowledge. Leonardo believed that only the faculty of sight allowed you to take in experience immediately, correctly, and with certainty.

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Speaking

1. Look through the text. Compare it with the report devoted to Leonardo

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СибАДИISAAC NEWTON

Isaac Newton was born in 1642 in a manor house in Lincolnshire, England. His father had died two months before his birth. When Isaac was three his mother remarried, and Isaac remained with his grandmother. He was not interested in the family farm, so he was sent to Cambridge University to study.

Isaac was born just a short time after the death of Galileo, one of the greatest scientists of all time. Galileo had proved that the planets revolve around the sun, not the earth as people thought at the time. Isaac Newton was very interested in the discoveries of Galileo and others. Isaac thought the universe worked like a machine and that a few simple laws governed it. Like Galileo, he realized that mathematics was the way to explain and prove those laws. Isaac Newton was one of the world’s great scientists because he took his ideas, and the ideas of earlier scientists, and combined them into a unified picture of how the universe works.

Isaac Newton explained the workings of the universe through mathematics. He formulated laws of motion and gravitation. These laws are math formulas that explain how objects move when a force acts on them. Isaac published his most famous book, Principia, in 1687 while he was a mathematics professor at Trinity College, Cambridge. In the Principia, Isaac explained three basic laws that govern the way objects move. He then described his idea, or theory, about gravity. Gravity is the force that causes things to fall down. If a pencil falls off a desk, it will land on the floor, not the ceiling. In his book Isaac also used his laws to show that the planets revolve around the suns in orbits that are oval, not round.

Isaac Newton used three laws to explain the way objects move. They are often call Newton’s Laws. The First Law states that an object that is not being pushed or pulled by some force will stay still, or will keep moving in a straight line at a steady speed. It is easy to understand that a bike will not move unless something pushes or pulls it. It is harder to understand that an object will continue to move without help. Think of the bike again. If someone is riding a bike and jumps off before the bike is stopped what happens? The bike continues on until it falls over. The tendency of an object to remain still, or keep moving in a straight line at a steady speed is called inertia.

The Second Law explains how a force acts on an object. An object accelerates in the direction the force is moving it. If someone gets on a bike and pushes the pedals forward the bike will begin to move. If someone gives the bike a push from behind, the bike will speed up. If the rider pushes back on the pedals the

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bike will slow down. If the rider turns the handlebars, the bike will change direction.

The Third Law states that if an object is pushed or pulled, it will push or pull equally in the opposite direction. If someone lifts a heavy box, they use force to push it up. The box is heavy because it is producing an equal force downward on the lifter’s arms. The weight is transferred through the lifter’s legs to the floor. The floor presses upward with an equal force. If the floor pushed back with less force,

the person lifting the box would fall through the floor. If it pushed back with more СибАДИforce the lifter would fly into the air.

When most people think of Isaac Newton, they think of him sitting under an apple tree observing an apple fall to the ground. When he saw the apple fall, Newton

began to think about a specific kind of motion gravity. Newton understood that gravity was the force of attraction between two objects. He also understood that an object with more matter –mass– exerted the greater force, or pulled smaller object toward it. That meant that the large mass of the earth pulled objects toward it. That is why the apple fell down instead of up, and why people don’t float in the air.

Isaac Newton thought about gravity and the apple. He thought that maybe gravity was not just limited to the earth and the objects on it. What if gravity extended to the moon and beyond? Isaac calculated the force needed to keep the moon moving around the earth. Then he compared it with the force the made the apple fall downward. After allowing for the fact that the moon is much farther from the earth, and has a much greater mass, he discovered that the forces were the

same. The moon in held in an orbit around earth by the pull of earth’s gravity.

Isaac Newton’s calculations changed the way people understood the universe. No one had been able to explain why the planets stayed in their orbits. What held them up? Less than 50 years before Isaac Newton was born it was thought that the planets were held in place by an invisible shield. Isaac proved that they were held in place by the sun’s gravity. He also showed that the force of gravity was affected by distance and by mass. He was not the first to understand that the orbit of a planet was not circular, but more elongated, like an oval. What

he did was to explain how it worked.

3. Give a summary of this text using these word structures:

the text is about...; the text deals with the problem...; the main problem of the text is...; I know that...; it is a well–known fact...; it is worth mentioning...; as for the problem of...; it should be noted that...

Discussing

1. Fill in the table. Add the lines if it is in need.

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2.Discuss the role of each scientist in the

a)world’s history;

b)in art’s history;

c)history of science;

d)in the history of automobile construction.

2. Match these phrases with the definitions given below.

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