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Composition Essay and Lab Report Contrast

There are different reasons for writing different materials, while all are about various findings, the structure, and the organization of every one of them is different from the rest. A composition essay can be either persuasive, argumentative, critique, or summary of a topic or response to questions. A lab report is usually for science subjects and records the findings of various experiments conducted. The below discussion will highlight the difference between writing a lab report and the composition essay.

To begin with, the first difference between a lab report and a composition essay is the structure of the paper. According to “A Comparison Between Reports And Essays”, in a composition essay, the work is organized with an introduction; it introduces the topic in question and has the thesis statement. The body answers the question and is arranged in multiple paragraphs and conclusions, which generalize everything written in the paper. The essay also has a title. However, for a lab report, there is an introduction talking about the experiment, abstract summarizing the whole paper and materials, and methods to explain the sample size for the study and the method used to arrive at the sample size. Additionally, the lab report has the results section from the experiment conducted, the discussion to explain the results, and to ensure whether the hypothesis was meant. Also, the essay composition details are usually arranged in paragraphs to describe and list any information. At the same time, in the lab report, the writer may use bulleting as long as the data represents the facts inferences. They are also very few styles that require the use of headlines while writing a composition essay, unfortunately for the lab reports, whatever format is being employed in the report, thy all contain headings. The lab report includes graphs and tables to explain the results from the experiment, but in a composition essay, all the information is depicted as prose paragraphs.

Secondly, the content between the two papers is very different; in a composition essay, the writer writes in response to the question which might require a persuasive, argumentative, or a critique. In contrast, in the case of a lab report, the writer writes the response for a conducted experiment. According to Popken, while in the composition essay, we use the first or third person in the lab reports, we use the third person, and it is usually written in the passive voice; this is to ensure that the writer remains objective and impersonal while recording the facts. The most prevalent difference between the essay and lab report in the case of content is the essay is based on evidence from various materials. Still, for lab reports, they are undisputed facts. The relaying of the information between the two academic writing is also different. In a lab report apart from writing in the third person, personal opinions are not referenced in the report, and the paper is written in the past. In the composition of the essay, someone’s views are addressed either as a prompt requirement or to conclude the essay, and the writing can be written both in the past, present, and future by using the appropriate signal phrases (Petrosky). Also, while the response to the question is answered by extensive research of various articles in the composition essays in the lab report, the author hypothesizes findings before experimenting; the hypothesis is either correct or wrong and realized after the examination.

Lastly, the inferences between the lab report and the essay composition are different. In the essay composition, the conclusion is from extensive research, which can both be criticized or approved by others. However, in the lab report, the findings are usually facts based on the experiments conducted; hence they cannot, in any chance, be disputed (“Libguides: Lab Report Writing: Lab Report Style”). At the end of a lab report, the recommendations are usually stated from the results of the experiment, while in the composition of the essay, the conclusion is the general ideas in the essay, and proposals are only written when required; this is usually very rare. After the conclusion, the essay composition has a work cited page for recording all the sources for the information in the essay, and this is hard for lab reports since they are written based on an experiment conducted; hence they are hardly any sources.

From the above discussion, they are various academic writing that is specific to specific subjects. The composition essay is prevalent in almost all subjects since they are based on research, while for lab reports, they are confined to a few topics, primarily sciences. The distinction between the two academic writing is evident, and one can distinguish just by going through them without even reading, they range from the structure, the content, and the conclusion. Though the differences between the two overpass the similarities, they help achieve the purpose of each academic writing by providing evidence to either support or dispute the essay question and record findings after conducting experiments in lab reports.

Works Cited

“A Comparison Between Reports And Essays”. Unilearning.Uow.Edu.Au, 2000, https://unilearning.uow.edu.au/report/1b.html.

“Libguides: Lab Report Writing: Lab Report Style”. Phoenixcollege.Libguides.Com, 2020, https://phoenixcollege.libguides.com/c.php?g=225738&p=1496028.

Petrosky, Anthony R. “From story to essay: Reading and writing.” College composition and Communication 33.1 (1982): 19-36.

Popken, Randall L. “Essay exams and papers: A contextual comparison.” Journal of Teaching Writing 8.1 (1989): 51-66.