3. The Conduct of Meetings 3.1 Group meetings 3.1.1. 3.1.2.

An alternative way of numbering paragraphs in a report

3. The Conduct of Meetings (a) Group meetings

(i) (ii)

(4) The conclusion, recommendations or main findings, ш an investigative or analytical report, you may discover several possible solutions to die problem you have been investigating. You may, of course,

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only recommend one solution, but you should give all the possibilities in your conclusion, with their advantages and disadvantages. If your report is to contain both a conclusion and recommendations, then put them in two separate sections. Always give your reason for recommending a particular course of action, especially if you have proposed several possible solutions in your conclusion and are recommending just one. If you are making more man one recommendation they should be numbered, to make them clearer and easier to differentiate.

(5) Including acknowledgements. If you need to acknowledge the help of other people, or if you have referred to their written work, you need a separate acknowledgements section. Do you just want to thank certain people for their help in compiling the report? If so you can simply say: 'I would like to acknowledge the help of the following people in the compilation of mis report:' and then list their names, alternatively you can mention what help they gave you. If you have referred to documents and publications, men it is customary to give the following information:

• in the case of books: the author, the title, the publisher, the year of publication.

• in the case of magazine or journal articles: the author, the title of the article, the title of the magazine or journal, the volume and number (or date) of the particular issue, and the year of publication.

• in the case of government documents: the department or author, the title, the document number, the publisher if it is a published document, and the year of issue

(6) Preparing appendices. Do keep the body of your report as short and interesting as possible, so that you keep the readers' attention. However, there will be times when you need to provide long documents or tables of figures to support your arguments. Where you need to provide such documents, therefore, it is a good idea to mention just the main features in the report itselfj but reproduce the whole document as an appendix For example, you might say: 'You may recall that in his report on the new computer systems last year, Jeremy Cornwood concluded mat some systems would be better organised on a product rather than a departmental basis (see Appendix A).' You would men reproduce the whole of Jeremy Cornwood's report as Appendix A.

N.B. When preparing a report you might want to use software programmes, such as Power Point using its various templates and auto wizards to create different presentations, thus saving your time.

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12. Answer the following questions:

84. What is a report?

85. What is the basic pattern of the report?

86. What types of reports do you know?

87. What is a recommendation report?

88. What is a conclusion report?

89. What is an information report?

90. What kind of information does the title page of the report contain?

91. Which section of the report contains a gist of the information?

92. Where would you locate a list of major headings?

93. In which section of the report would you give the background of the report?

94. Why is it important to narrate in the past tense in the introduction?

95. What is the largest and most relevant part of the report?

96. How would you sectionalise your report? What is the alternative way of numbering paragraphs in a report??

97. Why is it not reasonable to put the conclusions and recommendations at the beginning of the report?

98. Why is it necessary to number your recommendations?

99. In what cases should you make acknowledgements?

100. In what way would you acknowledge the help of people when compiling your report?

101. What would you do if you referred to documents and publications when compiling your report?

102. What is an appendix?

103. In which cases it is necessary to have an appendix to the report? •

13. Choose the correct answer An acknowledgement is...

104. A written statement by someone to say that he/she owes money.

105. A statement of gratitude for help or rendered services.

106. A test that proves the true value of someone/something.

An appendix is...

a) A formal request for something.

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Writing"

107. A printed paper sent out by an organisation.

108. A section attached to the end of a document, report or book.

A summary is...

109. A short version of something that gives the main points only.

110. A legal document that orders records, files etc. to be examined

111. A detailed study of the condition of something.

14. You are a Commercial Director. Write a report concerning a situation with regular customers.

15. You are a Warehouse-keeper. Write a report concerning an unsatisfactory situation at the company's warehouse.

16. You are a Transport Department Manager. Write a report concerning the organisation of the goods transportations within the boundaries of your area.

17. You are a Sales Manager. Write a report concerning the sales volume for the last three months.

18. You are a Personnel Manager. Write a report concerning the absenteeism rates for the last six months.

19. You are the General Manager of the production company. Write a report concerning the staff qualification level in your company.

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