3 principles of expert guidance on writing lab reports
Posted by Catherine Bennet
Lab reports account up to 25% of the overall grade in most technical courses. Unfortunately, most students don’t take this task with the utmost seriousness it deserves. Students presume writing lab reports as easy and unnecessary to study the procedure properly. Just like any other assignment or homework, every student should invest some time practicing to write lab reports as it is required to practically apply what is learned in class. There is no better way to put into practice what makes writing lab reports stand out.
1. Format
The first step in writing excellent lab reports is getting the format right. Just like any other academic paper, lab reports strictly have a specific format. This is the format that examiners look for when marking the paper. If you mess on the format there is no chance of recovering. That’s a fail on that particular paper. What is the format of a lab report? Let’s look!
- The first and most important thing when writing lab reports is the title. It isn’t a lab report if it doesn’t have a title. And, not just any title. The title has to be straight forward, inform on the experiment being done and short. The title should communicate on what the report is all about and it should be easy to understand.
- Abstract is more than a short summary. In a lab report, the abstract must capture the following key points: the purpose of the experiment, key findings, the significance, and a conclusion. All these details must be captured in the abstract if you are to write a good lab report. As much as the abstract comes just beneath the title in most cases this is the part written last. You should include a brief explanation of the theory used in the experiment if no theory is used, write on the methodology. In a lab report, an abstract should be approximately 100-200 words.
- The introduction is paramount when writing a lab report. Coming after the abstract this is the part that introduces your report. Information on the background experiment must be included in the title. Most lab results if not all are scientific and for this reason, it is a requirement that you recognize previous researches on the same field. State how helpful previous researches have been and what new insights you report will provide.
- The ‘methodology and materials used’ section. Experiments are a step-by-step procedure. There is a need for you to write down the methodology of your experiment including reagents and equipment used. Everything should be precise as it was when doing the experiment. If you make mistakes when writing the procedure then that’s a failed experiment since it won’t be practical.
- After doing an experiment, there are some results in every step of the procedure. These results should be written down with precision as they occurred when doing the experiment. In writing lab reports there is no room for fake results. Everything has to be accurate.
- Findings and discussion. The aim of a lab report is to investigate something. After writing down the results the next procedure is discussing the results. You can only interpret the results if you are conversant with what you are researching on. Different results have different meanings.
- Conclusion/recommendations. Every piece of writing must have a conclusion. The same case applied to a lab report. After discussing the findings, the next thing is the conclusion. This is where you should write your standing ground as far as the experiment is concerned. Never introduce new ideas on the conclusion. But you can state on the various fields related to the niche that might need further research.
- This section is more often than not overlooked by most students but if you used graphs, charts, raw data, and tables that were not included in the report itself, appendices must be included in your report.
2. The Area of Study
Before you can even start writing the lab report, it is recommended that you first research on the field. There is a lot to it than just doing an experiment and discussing the findings. How do you even discuss findings that you don’t know how they come about? You should also understand the audience and use words that are understandable to them.
3. Outside Help with Writing Lab Reports
One of the most effective ways of learning how to write a good lab report is by ordering papers written by professionals. And, there is no better place to ask for ‘write my lab report for me’ help than from custom writing agencies. If you are not completely sure on how to go about it, you can always hire someone from custom paper writing to write your lab report. Writing lab reports is one of the reasons why most students fail in their overall grades. Most students are not sure how to go about it, but not anymore if you read this post. If you get stuck in writing a lab report, never shy off from seeking help for assignment available for you today and online.
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