ESL WORKSHEET - Business Report

LESSON PLAN FOR ENGLISH TEACHERS

WRITING REPORTS

LinguaHouse
Apr. 4, 2023

Level: Pre-Intermediate (A2-B1)
Type of English: Business English
Tags: Business People; Business Skills; Writing Reports; Developing An Argument; 16-18 Years Old; 18+ Years Old; Article Based
Publication date: 04/04/2023

This lesson looks at the requirements of a business report. Students will hear three people talking about reports and read an article detailing how a report should be written. Exercises focus on reading and listening skills, related vocabulary and give students the opportunity to discuss questions on the topic (by Joe Wilson).

• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in American English.
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in American English.
• CLICK HERE to download the student’s worksheet in British English.
• CLICK HERE to download the teacher’s lesson plan in British English.
• CLICK HERE to download/listen to the audios (Am/Br English).

AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Speaker 1: Well, there are a few reasons for writing a report depending on the type of business you’re in, but generally what you want to do is to solve a problem. You’ll need to begin by analyzing a situation and saying what the issue is and what you plan to do about it. Then you have to collect all the information you need and evaluate it. You need to think about what it tells you; how does it help you to decide? Even if it helps you to decide what you do not want to do, that helps you get closer to your answer. At the end of a report, you’ll have to make some kind of recommendation based on what you have found so that there’s a clear outcome for people reading it.
Speaker 2: When you’re writing your report, you need to keep in mind the people who will be reading it. Those people will be the decision-makers in your company. If the report is effective, it will make it clear for them what they should do about the problem that you have identified. So you will be writing it for management: it could be for your supervisor, the CEO, or essentially any stakeholders who have an interest in what you have found. People working at this level often don’t have enough time to do all of the research themselves, so they need someone to do it for them and your report presents it to them and helps them.
Speaker 3: The report needs to have a detailed, but a brief section at the beginning which gives all of the basic information that is in the report. This is called an executive summary. It needs to say what the problem is, what the information found and what your recommendations are. Your report could be 20 pages long and that might be more than stakeholders have time to read. So they need to be very clear on the content of your report and then they can always look in more detail at sections if they need to. Then, a bit like an essay, you need an introduction, body and a conclusion followed by your advice on how to act. These need to give clear options about what to do next. They should be practical because there’s no point in suggesting something that can’t be done. And they need to be actionable. It needs to be very well-defined exactly what needs to be done next.

Adapted from: https://www.linguahouse.com/esl-lesson-plans/business-english/writing-reports. Accessed on December 11, 2023. © 2008–2023 LinguaHouse.com. All rights reserved.