Welcome to the Writing a Short Report in Biochemistry Program

This program has been designed to help you to write a short scientific report for Biochemistry. In creating this program, there are three main principles for successful writing that we have used to inform our design. They are:

Context:

Each discipline has its own way of constructing knowledge as well as its own way of writing reports. For example, a laboratory report in chemical engineering will be very different from a report in biochemistry. In this program, we have used example texts from second-year biochemistry short reports as the basis for teaching you about writing a short scientific report. These texts are typical of student writing in your discipline. Some are more successful than others. We believe that in using these kinds of examples you will learn more about what is appropriate for the context you are writing in, that is, the discipline of biochemistry. Of course, you also have to keep in mind that you are writing in a university context and therefore your writing has to show that you understand how to use the technical language of your discipline and also general academic language or style.

Purpose:

In general, short reports written in biochemistry have a different purpose to those written in other science disciplines and this will be reflected in the structure and content of the report. In this program, we have tried to make the structure and content clear at each stage of the short report. The overall design for the program is based on the stages of a typical short report. Each report that you write will also have its own individual purpose based on the aim of your experiment and you will need to keep this in mind as you write each stage of your report. Of course, reports at university are also written for assessment purposes. Writing about a particular topic can help you to understand it better as well as improving your writing skills. When you graduate, you will find that your written communication skills will be critical both in getting a job and in performing in that job.

Audience:

Short scientific reports are written for someone else to read, usually your lecturer in the university context. However, your lecturer often wants you to take on the role of a professional scientist when writing your report. Whatever kind of writing you are engaged in, it is always important to try to write from the perspective of the reader.