ELC3401 Sept 2006

English in the Workplace for FCLU Students

Unit 3 Writing Workplace Reports

Resources

Section 1
Exercise: proofreading the introduction section of reports

1. This report presents findings on work-related stress. The causes and categories of work
related stress can be identified with data evidence from various sources. Moreover, the
effects on people working under stress have been also outlined.

- Word order: 'have also been' is more acceptable.

2. Being employees in Hong Kong, everyone buried his head in working. As a result of
heavy workloads, employees often suffer from work-related stress.

- ‘to bury one’s head in work’ is not a logical consequence of being employees in Hong
Kong; there is a problem of coherence here.
- so a more lucid paraphrase would be: ‘Every employee in Hong Kong buries his head
in work.’ This gets round the further problem of failed agreement of plural countable
‘employees’ with singular ‘everyone’.
- ‘in work’ instead of ‘in working’ (cf. noun phrase following 'bury your head in X’ in the
expression ‘to bury one's head in the sand’).

3. There is two significant news about safety last month. They have both been welcomed by
construction contractors.

- the past simple of the verb ‘to be’ should be used;

- ‘news’ is uncountable, and might be replaced by a phrase rendering it countable, e.g.
‘pieces of news’, or possibly ‘news items’; and thus ‘There were two news items’.

4. The aim of this report is to examine the ways to prevent computer-related illness in the
company. The findings and recommendations made in this report are based on material
available from websites and from the literature on ergonomics.

- Omit ‘the’ in ‘the ways’: no particular and exclusive ways are being held in mind.

5. I will try to identify which types of illness are commonly occurred among computer
users.

- ‘Occur’ cannot be passive, must be active; so: ‘types of illness commonly occur’.

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6. In Hong Kong, the use of computers in commerce and communications is more common
than 90s.

- The prepositional phrase is incomplete; the phrase ‘90s’ should be a full prepositional
phrase, e.g. ‘in the nineties’, or perhaps ‘than it was in the nineties’.

7. The purpose of this report is to remind our staffs (of our company) to take awareness on
the computer-related illness.

- ‘our staffs (of our company)’ - ‘the staff of our company’. It might, however, be
stylistically simpler to write ‘our staff’, the company being understood.
- ‘to take awareness on’ – ‘to be aware of’.
- Omit ‘the’ in ‘the computer-related illness’ because ‘illness’ is not specific but general
here.

8. The accident rate of the Hong Kong construction industry per 1000 workers was
247.93%, higher than the average rate during the previous five years by 3%.

- The accident rate in the Hong Kong construction industry…

9. As the findings in Chart 1 reveal, JSA training has been begun since 1997. The number of
work supervisors in the operational units who have received JSA training has increased
substantially since 1997.

- The verb ‘begin’ by definition implies a single point in time, so here ‘was begun in’ is
correct.

10. In view of the increasing occupational health standards, it is perhaps not surprising that
the number of employees receiving occupational therapy or physiotherapy decrease
significantly since then.

- ‘…has decreased significantly since then’; past to present, with importance for now:
hence present perfect

B. The purpose of this report is to figure out what are the factors in increasing the job stress,
the causes of the problems and the ways commonly used to prevent or reduce the
occurrence of stress. All the findings will be served as a reference for putting in the staff
support mechanisms, which aimed to prevent incidents due to job stress.

- ‘figure out’ is too informal in style to be suitable in a formal workplace report. A verb
such as ‘determine’ or ‘establish’ would be acceptable instead.

Note the following acceptable structures:

FIGURE OUT + Noun Phrase; e.g. 'He figured out her reasons'.;
DETERMINE + Noun Phrase; e.g. 'She determined the cause of the trouble';
ESTABLISH + Noun Phrase; e.g. 'They established the grounds for his absence'.

- ‘be served’ should be active, i.e. ‘will serve’, for the construction is:
x [SERVE AS] y where x and y are noun phrases, x being the subject and
y the complement of the verb phrase.

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 - Presumably ‘aimed’ should be ‘aim’, in the present simple tense, if the writer means
that it is a fact that the ‘staff support mechanisms’ aim to do so.

C.
1. According to the statistic of the Labour Department, it shows that the construction
industry is the most dangerous industry comparing to the other major industries in the
past decade. There were 19588 cases of accidents and 56 fatal accident settled in 1998.

2. According to Labour Department statistics, the construction industry has been the most
dangerous of all major industries in the past decade. In 1998, 19588 accidents and 56 fatal
accidents occurred.

Text 2 is better because:

1.) ‘Labour Department statistics’ avoids incorrect use of the first occurrence of
‘the’ in ‘the statistic of the Labour Department’.
2.) 'Statistics' is normally plural.
3.) The present perfect is correctly used to express facts - important for now -
which extend from the past up to the present.
4.) In text 1, the phrase ‘comparing to’ is inaccurate: ‘compared with’ or ‘compared
to’ are acceptable comparative phrases, something being compared to or with
something else (for these two possibilities and examples, refer students to the
VLC' s Web Concordancer: keyword 'compared'). But the phrase ‘the most’ + adj
+ of all (+ noun plural)’ is more concise.
5.) The second instance of ‘accident’ in text 1 should be plural (countable).
6.) It is unclear why the writer chose the verb ‘settled’ here: perhaps ‘occur’, as
accidents occur or happen, is appropriate.

D. The aim of this report is to examine ways to prevent the accident rate in the construction
industry. The accident rate in 1998 was 247.93 per 1000 workers, higher then the average
rate during the previous five years by 3%.

- The verb ‘prevent’ cannot be used with ‘rate’ here; accidents can be prevented; or the
number of accidents can be reduced; the accident rate itself is expressible in numerical
terms: it cannot of itself be prevented or stopped.

Section 2 Exercises: writing introductions

Part 1 Suggested answers

This report (1) was requested by Dr. P. Lui of our Security Services Section at Bigbuild on 10
June 2005. It (2) analyses in detail the problem of office security, following a number of
incidents that (3) occurred during the last three months. The report (4) aims at raising staff
awareness of office safety procedures and (5) recommending a sensible approach to security
in the workplace.

Part 2 Suggested answer

Correct order of sentences: 3 1 4 2 6 5
(3) The purpose of this report is to present the results of a survey on the popularity of ZAP
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 portable phones in Hong Kong.
(1) The survey was conducted between 1 June and 30 September 2001.
(4) It solicited responses from a total of 5000 firms that have sold the phones to the public
in the last year.
(2) Of these companies, 4892 responded by returning a completed questionnaire.
(6) Subsequently, short interviews were conducted with respondents at 10 selected
companies to amplify the information provided in the questionnaire.
(5) A parallel study is planned for next year.

Part 3 Suggested answers

be present write reach read request interview find

This report (1) has been written in response to a request for an investigation into the disappearance of
certain company property over the last six months. It (2) was requested by the General Manager, Mr.
Jack So and (3) and was to be read by all senior staff. The following (4) presents a brief account of the
circumstances.

On 14 July 2005 it (5) was found that the following items (6) were missing from the stockrooms:

2 IBM notebook computers

2 HP laser printers
1 Standard microwave oven

Staff (7) were interviewed by the police the following day and certain conclusions (8) were reached.
The report (9) presents these and makes recommendations for ensuring this does not recur.

Section 6
Exercise

1. a) benefited / have benefited

b) 

2. a) benefited / has benefited

b) 

3. a) need
b) 

4. a) need to be given
b) 

5. a) has resulted
b) 

6. a) proved
b) 

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7. a) 
b) am convinced

8. a) agree
b) are agreed (‘agreed’ is used as a participial adjective)

9. a) worry
b) are worried
c) relocating
d) being relocated

Section 7
1. dissatisfied
2. to satisfy
3. unsatisfactory
4. satisfactory
5. satisfactory
6. dissatisfaction
7. satisfy
8. satisfied
9. satisfied
10. satisfied/dissatisfied
11. dissatisfied
12. satisfied

Section 5 Exercise: proofreading the Findings section

A. (page 129)
1. The number of industrial fatalities in the construction industry in 1998 was higher by
6.9% than the average for the previous five years, whereas the industrial fatality rate in
the construction industry in 1998 was 0.709 per 1000 workers, slightly lower (0.032) than
the average rate in the previous five years. However, this does not suggest that safety in
the construction industry have to be improved.

- Final sentence: 'safety…has to be improved'.

2. The mean score of 16 sources of stress are listed in Table 2 in descending order. It can be
seen that only items 1 to 7 scored more than 4. The mid-point on the scale, i.e.3, indicated
that the item was a source of stress.

- 'The mean scores of 16 sources of stress are listed …’

3. Only 17% of employees derived satisfaction from their work. This showed that only the
minority of respondents was generally satisfied with their work.

- ‘… the minority of respondents were generally satisfied with their work.’

4. The overall outcome of the findings seems to be that work-related stress pose a threat to
the physical and mental health of employees as well as to the productivity of the

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 company.

- ‘…work related stress poses a threat…’

B.
1. The number of industrial fatalities in the construction industry in 1998 was higher by
6.9% than the average for the previous five years. Whereas the industrial fatality rate in
the construction industry in 1998 was 0.709 per 1000 workers, slightly lower (0.032) than
the average rate in the previous five years. However, this does not suggest that safety in
the construction industry have to be improved.

- The ‘whereas’ clause must be added on to the previous clause/sentence. ‘Whereas’

cannot be used in a dependent clause unless linked within the same sentence to a main
clause.

C.
1. As the findings in Chart1 show, percentage responses to the amount of stress experienced
were as follows: 12% experienced no stress, 33% little stress, 36% average stress, 12% a
fairly high level of stress and 4% a lot. The result reflected that in our company, a total of
88% of our employees had work-related stress at different levels.

- The verb ‘reflected’ in ‘reflected that’ needs replacing with ‘showed’ or ‘indicated’.

2. This equipment can give additional protection. With the design of safety equipment, the
correct procedure for using the equipment should be installed into the workers in order to
increase the protective efficiency of the equipment.

- The verb ‘installed’ should be replaced by the verb ‘instilled’.

D.
1. The findings in Table 1 below summarise the main types of accident in the construction
site. The main causes of these accidents can be explained as follows: one reason is the
poor condition of sites.

- In the first sentence: ‘… the main types of accident on the construction site…'

2. The chances of workers stepping on or striking against objects are much higher. The
highest percentage of workers injured by striking against or being struck by moving
objects represents a significant reason of workplace injuries.

- Last sentence: 'reason for workplace injuries'.

Section 6 Exercise: making suggestions and recommendations

1. I suggest you find …

22 
22 
22 
22 
22 

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