Points to pay attention to

Points to pay attention to in the writing process of a final group project report

Before you write:

• discuss and distribute the writing workload among group members fairly and based on the strength of each member. For example, designate the responsibility for final-editing to a member who is good at language;
• focus on and decide the organisation patterns for the major three sections, Data analysis/Findings and Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. Decide whether to interpret the analyses and findings by ‘data-group by data-group’, ‘method by method’, or ‘finding by finding’;
• create and analyse box plots/graphs/tables/charts, which show the significant trends or points;
• plan the use of these box plots/graphs/tables/charts at suitable locations within the main text;
• think of the significance of analytical methods, findings and factors, and put them in order of the most significant to the least;
• consider the possible causes of the trends and points you notice, the effects that these points could bring, and the implications that these analyses/findings have for the current and future studies; and
• check the requirements of references and in-text citations (i.e. which style to use, e.g. IEEE/Vancouver/Chicago/APA/ASA).

While you write:

• use the appropriate tense, personal pronouns (1st person singular or plural etc) and voice (active/passive), e.g. you do not want to use present tense to describe a trend in 2005; but you want to use the first person pronoun “we” to recognise and show the cooperative effort by your group members;
• include appropriate box plots/graphs/tables/charts with descriptions at suitable places in the main text, as this can help your elaboration;
• make sure your ideas are logically connected with one another.

After you write:

• reread and proofread your work - this will help you find mistakes and typos in your writing;
• match and check the in-text citations with the references in the Reference List.