Skip to Main Content

Study Techniques

Essays

An essay is a formal piece of writing written with a particular structure and layout with a particular task set. An essay displays your knowledge within a subject area and are often used to assess your progress and provide a grade. An essay will not only display your subject knowledge and writing skills, but will also demonstrate your critical thinking, research and reading skills, all of which add to your employability. 

You can find further information about writing an essay on our Academic Writing guide.

Reports

Reports are organised documents that provide precise detail on a subject area. They are organised into different sections which are usually separated by headings and subheadings to provide clarity to the reader. Students often find that having these headings helps them to stay focused on the topic.

The layout of a report is completely dependent on the subject you are focusing on. If you were writing a scientific report where your collected primary data it may be structured as:

  • Title page
  • Abstract
  • Table of contents
  • Introduction
  • Review of literature
  • Method
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Reference list
  • Appendices

If you were writing a report for business, whereby you were analysing and making recommendations for a company, it may be structured as:

  • Title page
  • Executive summary
  • Table of contents
  • Introduction
  • Marketing audit
  • Marketing strategy
  • Budget
  • Conclusion
  • Recommendations
  • Reference List
  • Appendices

Use these as examples of how you might approach your own structure, but the structures within reports are not fixed. Some modules might even provide you with a template they want you to use, so check your module handbooks and other assessment information for this.