Business English Writing: Planning a Report

In this article, you will

• learn how to plan longer pieces of business writing
• practice key vocabulary on the topic of reports and proposals
• learn about the prefixes “sub-” and “counter-”.

Newsmart Level 4 (B2, TOEIC 551–668, TOEFL iBT 53–64, IELTS 5–6)

Business English Writing: Planning a Report

When we think about business English writing, we often think about emails. But longer pieces of business writing, like reports and proposals, are often even more challenging for business English learners. So what’s the key to effective report writing in English? The answer, in a word, is planning. Before you start writing your report, think hard about these four points.

1. How will you organize your report?

A report isn’t a story or an article. It needs to be divided into sections. For example, a long business report might include the following sections: Executive Summary, Introduction, Background, Research, Findings, Conclusions, Recommendations, and Appendices. A shorter report might have only a few sections. Some sections might be divided into sub-sections. Plan the structure of your report right from the beginning, but be ready to change it later if necessary.

You can use a diagram called a mind map during the planning process. This will help you to generate, store, and organize lots of ideas, without worrying yet about putting those ideas in order. Write your section titles in circles in different parts of a large sheet of paper. Then add more and more ideas around each circle as you plan the whole report in great detail. Draw lines between different parts of the mind map to show how various ideas are connected. Keep adding to this mind map during the whole process of planning and writing your report.

2. What do your target readers need?

Put yourself in your target readers’ shoes. What information would you want to find in the report? Make a detailed list of all the specific questions that your target readers might have. Use this list to plan what to include in your report, what to prioritize, and what to leave out (or to move to an appendix at the end).

If you can’t think of enough questions, start with a list of question words (e.g. why, where, when, how much). Use this list to generate lots of questions. Keep adding to your list of questions during the writing process, and make sure you answer them all by the end.

Now match your target readers’ questions to the sections on your mind map. Where in your business report will you answer each question?

3. What do you personally want to achieve with the report?

Are you trying to persuade your readers to make a particular decision? Do you want to help your own career by showing that a bad situation in the past wasn’t your fault? Or are you simply trying to report the truth and leave the decision-making to other people?

If your aim is to persuade, it’s good to imagine you’re preparing for a formal debate or a court hearing. Divide a sheet of paper into four boxes. In box 1, make a detailed list of arguments and evidence to support your point of view. Now imagine what your opponent might say to challenge each of your arguments. Write these counterarguments in box 2. In box 3, make a list of what your opponent might say to support an alternative suggestion or recommendation. Then use box 4 to defend your point of view from the counterarguments in box 2 and to attack the arguments in box 3.

Finally, decide where to add each argument and counterargument (if you decide to include them all) to your mind map.

4. How will the target readers read the report?

Some readers will study your report carefully from beginning to end. For these readers, you’ll need to build a convincing argument that flows logically and is easy to follow. Take time during the planning stage to experiment with different ways of structuring your report to see what works best. When you’re ready, take a new sheet of paper and transform your mind map into a flow chart, showing how your report will be organized from beginning to end.

Other readers will skim through it quickly looking for key facts, but will then want to analyze in detail the reasoning behind some of those facts. So you’ll need to provide a contents page at the beginning and perhaps an index at the end. Plan how you will use subheadings, bold text, numbered lists, bullet points, tables, and charts, to make your key arguments really jump out from the page. Plan how you will include cross-references between sections to help your readers find supporting arguments quickly and easily.

A third type of reader will want to skim through it in five minutes to get all the information they need. As a general rule, assume that the most powerful people will be in this group, simply because they don’t have time to read everything fully. For the five-minute reader, make sure you provide a strong Executive Summary on the first page, saying very clearly what happened, what should happen, and why.

Some business English writing experts recommend writing the Executive Summary last — after all, it’s supposed to be a summary of the report. But there’s a lot to be said for doing it the other way round: write the Executive Summary first, and then write the body of the report to support the Executive Summary. That way, your report will be a lot more focused. But even if you don’t write the summary until the end, make sure you plan it very carefully at the beginning.

Photo credit: monkeybusinessimages for iStock

Originally published at www.getnewsmart.com.