How To Write Undergraduate Lab Reports? 5 Tips to Follow

Report writing helps scientists in presenting new ideas or discoveries in front of the research committee. It aims to explain, inform, and persuade readers, especially when a research project is sponsored or funded by an organisation. In different steps, the committee asked the researcher to inform them about their progress towards the completion of the project by writing reports. Likewise, if a report is asked to be written to inform the funding organisation about the progress of a scientific study conducted in a controlled environment or in laboratories, it will be called a lab report.

Concurrently, undergraduate lab reports will be the ones that an undergraduate student is asked to write to convey the aims, methods, findings, and conclusions of a scientific experiment. All in all, the main purpose of writing undergraduate lab reports is to increase students’ understanding of the project. The main topic of discussion for this article is to share five easy tips that students must follow to draft a good undergraduate lab report. Let’s get started:

Undergraduate lab reports-a brief introduction:  

Lab reports are assigned to students performing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics studies, commonly abbreviated as STEM. It aims to give students a hand–on working experience in resolving some technical issues (often field-specific). These reports are usually shorter than research papers and scholarly articles. A writer needs to remain much more conscious about the quality, quantity, sentence clarity, and authenticity of the information while writing undergraduate lab reports. At the basic undergraduate level, knowing the structuring details of the report and considering a few examples as templates can provide enough information. You can hire lab report writing services for drafting a good undergraduate lab report. Also, the following are some tips that are easy to follow and effective enough to give guarantee success to you:

1. Search for the basic purpose of writing an undergraduate lab report:

Writing a clear and focused lab report is crucial to science students. Undergraduate lab report writing is not a difficult task, but the fear of attempting something new may scare many students when they are asked to write a lab report. Writing a report for the first time may confuse you, but do not worry; it happens to almost everyone. To take a head start, you must first think about why you are asked to write a report or what may be the possible reason for writing a report. Of course, these questions can be asked from the advisor, seniors, and Google Search Engine. Most probably, the purpose of writing undergraduate lab reports is to teach the method of reporting a scientific story to the students. 

2. Follow proper structural guidelines:

Once you know the purpose of writing, you must start thinking about what your supervisor and research community are expecting from you as a report writer. Once you get a clear answer to this question as well, you must consult a proper structuring guide. These guidelines contain all the vital information to turn you into an expert writer from a novice report writer. Briefly, undergraduate lab reports contain the following sections:

• Title page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Literature review
• Methodology
• Results and findings
• Conclusion
• References
• Appendices

While considering the lab report writing guidelines, you must get which role each of these parts plays in serving the overall purpose of lab reports. Definitely, each item plays a certain role and has a specific purpose of including in the lab report.

3. Review a few examples as a template:

Tip # 3 for writing undergraduate lab reports will be very effective if you have good reading habits. Most students take it wrong when they are asked to use a template for drafting a report; it means they exactly copy the content. However, considering a template simply means reading and learning to make a report that matches in quality and quantity with the standard one. Templates are helpful in searching for a starting point to keep you on the right track. Additionally, using templates is also an ideal option if you are confused about the style, tone, and language to use in a lab report.

4. Complete research before you write:

This tip is not only helpful in writing lab reports, but it can be equally important for writing other types of academic writing tasks as well. Research, before you write, is as important as thinking matters before speaking anything. Research allows you to gather all the relevant information that is necessary to conduct a lab experiment and find the authenticity of the facts and figures that you have just found. No doubt, research is part of the preliminary stages of conducting an experiment, but before writing, it is extremely important to support the right words selection. By having a complete set of information on your hand, you can merely focus on the content required to make a good report. 

5. Reread your report after putting yourself in the position of a reader:

Even after completing a research lab report, you still need to put some extra miles. Proofreading, revision, and correction are the most irritating things for students but believe me; these things have the potential to take your report to the next level. During proofreading, one thing will be very beneficial for all. That is, never consider that a report originally belongs to you. Instead, while proofreading, you must think that you are a reader and you have to critique someone else’s work. This assumption will allow you to locate almost all contextual and grammatical errors. Similarly, the moment you complete the report, switch back to your role as a writer and induce all corrections to ensure an error-free submission of the report to the research committee.

Final thoughts:                       

Undergraduate lab reports writing is an easy academic writing task that can be completed effectively after knowing only a few important things. The article has provided all basic information in the form of tips that a student needs to consider if he/she really wants to draft a first lab report like a pro. All in all, these tips will surely help you to get appreciation from your concerned supervisor.