EXERCISE

Reports are ubiquitous in the work world. While they are common, there are many different types. Reports share the common goal of delivering information, but they take very different forms to accomplish this goal. To help expose you to the many and varied forms of reports, and to sensitize you to the relationship between audience and form, you will analyze two different reports using the PAD approach, and assess the similarities and differences between your exemplars.

Assignment

To get ready for the Collaborative Report, you’ll be analyzing report examples for purpose, audience, and design to give you an idea of the work you’ll be doing.

The goal here is to begin to familiarize you with the report genre–which is as common as email in the workplace and really, really broad. This discussion works to expose you to different types of reports and relationship between form and PAD. Note the similarities and differences between different types of reports.

The assignment:

• Using Google, find two sample reports
  • The reports can be any type you want, but the two should be different types. Use what you learned about different types of reports in the reading to help you figure out what type you’re looking at.
• For each report you choose, write a brief analysis of the following
  • Purpose: What is the report doing? What’s the goal?
  • Audience: Who was the report written for? What aspects of the report suggest who the audience is?
  • Design: Describe the format (structure, headings, figures, etc.). Describe the organization/structure of the report–list all the sections included in the report and a brief summary (one sentence) of each section.
• After analyzing each report, write a short paragraph comparing the two reports. What similarities and differences do you see.