Como Escribir Un Ensayo

UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH
SCHOOL OF PHARMACY & BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES

GUIDANCE ON WRITING LABORATORY REPORTS

A Laboratory Report is broken down into five major areas. The first section is the introduction followed by the materials and methods, results, discussion and finally the references.

Introduction:

The introduction is broken down into two areas, the "What", and "Why". These areasshould be addressed in the introduction. The "What" is background information on the topic of your lab report. You can get this information from your schedule, lecture notes, other books, or journals. The "Why" is the purpose of your lab and can include the hypotheses i.e. the aims of your experiments. This section is usually a few sentences in length and occurs at the end of the introduction.(Please DO NOT include a separate "Aims" sections).

Materials/Methods:

This is the "How" of the experiment i.e how did you go about performing the experiments to satisfy the stated aims. This should be in the form of a sequential explanation, in paragraph form, of how the lab was carried out. Include fully labelled diagrams where needed, making sure you refer to any diagrams in the text. Includethe materials used with the explanation and not in a separate category. Remember, this should be a narrative paragraph, not a list and should be written in the past tense.

Results:

This is a sequential account of what happened in the lab. This is not why it happened. In other word it is an account of your observation and not the interpretation of them. There should always be a writtennarrative of the lab results. As well as a written description of the events in the laboratory, other methods of displaying data should be used. Data tables or graphs (figures) are probably the best way to display the data. Each data table and figure must be labelled with a title and include proper units, where appropriate. In addition, all figures and tables should be numbered (i.e. Figure 1, Figure2, Table 1, Table 2 etc) and referred to in the accompanying text.

Discussion:

In the discussion, your data should be interpreted, explaining how its supports or does not support the hypothesis. When explaining what the results show, use or refer to the relevant data to support individual conclusions. State clearly what the overall conclusions of the experiment are and how they can berelated to other more general concepts or can be applied clinically. In addition, it may also be worth considering any sources of error that may have occurred in the experiment and how these could be eliminated next time. DO NOT include a separate conclusions paragraph.

References:

This is the section where you report the sources of your information to substantiate any claims or statements madein the text. You are advised to cited references in the Vancouver format. Guidance on how to reference according to the Vancouver style can be obtained from the following university website at http://www.referencing.port.ac.uk/

Information on the overall presentation of reports:

Reports should be:
1. Word processed. Tables and figures should be produced to an acceptable standard usingavailable computer software. All tables and figures must be accompanied by a full legend that allows the reader to understand what the figure or table is about without reference to the main text. All tables and figures should be numbered consecutively and referred to in the text.
2. Typing should be double line spaced.
3. 12 point font size should be used.
4. ALL aspects of the report should bewritten in the third person. i.e. "..it has been observed..." NOT "...I have observed..."
5. The past tense should be used when narrating procedure, observations etc and the present tense for the statement of conclusions and generally accepted facts.
6. Foreign language words and abbreviations (such as e.g., i.e., in vivo and in vitro) together with Latin names of micro-organisms etc must be...