Like writing reports in real life, studying how to write business reports sounds both boring and difficult. However, with the activities in this article, students can get easy and entertaining practice of the format and language of all kinds of business reports.
Business reports language list dictation
Students listen to words and phrases for reports and shout out whenever they think they know what they have in common, with categories like:
- typical section headings (“Recommendations”, etc)
- common first sentences (“This report was commissioned in order to…”, etc)
- explaining purpose/ reasons phrases (“The main reason for this was…”, etc)
- positive language phrases (“USPs include…”, etc)
- negative language phrases (“More work is needed on…”, etc)
- describing numbers phrases (“more or less…”, etc)
- generalising/ hedging phrases (“the vast majority of…”, etc)
- future forms (“This is predicted to…”, etc)
- recommendations phrases (“Possible solutions include…”, etc)
- linking words that start a sentence (“However,…”, etc)
- comparing phrases (“far more…”, etc)
- reference expressions (“these”, etc)
- passive voice sentences (“This will be further developed over…”, etc)
- trends language for things going up (“There has been a substantial rise in…”, etc)
- trends language for things becoming flat (“After that, it plateaued at…”, etc)
Strong students should be able to make guesses without any help, as long as you accept different wording that means the same thing as the heading of that section (accepting “advice” or “suggestions” instead of “recommendations”, etc). It’s also worth preparing a list of possible categories in case students get stuck.
After labelling the lists on a worksheet, students can be tested on how much they remember with a brainstorming sheet with the same headings, and/ or test each other with the same list dictation game.
New from old business reports
Find or write a short report with lots of useful language in it such as a BULATS Writing Part Two model answer, then rewrite it in a table with one word per box. Students take turns changing one word, stopping their partners doing so if that change makes the report not make sense, makes a grammatical mistake, doesn’t fit into that place in the report due to the punctuation, etc. To make it easier, you could allow them to delete unnecessary words, to replace one word with two or more words, and/ or to replace words in the same places as were replaced earlier in the game.
When they give up making any more changes without breaking the rules, they can then compare the changes they made with other groups.
This is easiest with students working on a computer together to delete and rewrite the words in each square of the table. To do it on paper, you could have a table with a blank box above each box that has a word in it, or you could give them slips of blank paper the same size as the table cells to place on top of them and then write on.
Business reports language discuss and agree
Make a list of words, phrases and sentence stems which are useful for many business reports and can also be used in other communication like “The main reason for… is…” and “… is likely to happen within… years”. Groups of students try to use that language to make sentences which match the whole group’s experiences, opinions, etc. After a few minutes in groups, they can share a sentence with the class and see if other groups agree. Theyn can also be tested on the language that they just used with a brainstorming task, an error correction task, etc.
Business reports make me say yes
Students make personal yes/ no questions using reports language (“Is your purpose for being here to get a future job?” for “purpose”, “Do you highly recommend your local area as a place to live?” for “highly recommend”, “Is your look based on any famous people?” for “based on”, etc), including personal questions actually about reports if they like (“Are most of your reports quite formal?”, “Do you have to write a summary in your reports?”, etc). They get one point each time that their partner says “Yes”, but no point for other answers like “No”, “Only sometimes”, and “I’m not sure”.
Business reports chain writing
Give each student a blank piece of paper or blank electronic document and the same writing reports task, e.g. a report on a topic related to something you’ve recently studied in class such as the last textbook topic. Ask each student to write the first heading of the report, then pass that report onto the next person in the class. This means that they will also receive a similar report from someone else. Ask them to write the next section, next sentence or next line (depending on which system you want to follow), then pass the report on again. This continues until the reports are finished, then they can discuss how much sense the reports make, which the best report is, how they are different from each other, etc.
Business reports consequences
Although it can be difficult to justify in some more serious business classes, the chain writing activity above is more fun if students hide all but the last line when they pass it, making it more like the original Consequences drawing game. For example, one student writes the first heading, folds the paper so it can’t be seen, then passes and receives a report needing the first line of that section. The same can be done on computers by students changing the script that they have just written to white before passing it onto the next person (by forwarding the doc, passing on the iPad, etc). After writing the last line, they pass and receive one more time, reveal everything (by unfolding or changing the script to black), the discuss how much the reports make sense, which report in the class is best, etc.