Tips for Student Reviews/Reports

[Health warning: personal preferences may differ between researchers!]

One of the key skills being developed in an undergraduate or graduate degree is the ability to summarise and communicate complex ideas in a succinct and accessible way.  This is tested several times during the Physics degree course here at Leicester, and common mistakes can lead to lost marks.  Here's a list of my own personal preferences for reviews and reports, in case they're of use to the wider community.

• Three Ts:  Tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; then tell them what you’ve told them.  Repetition of key points helps to reinforce them.  You’re telling a story.
• Central Theme:  Use the introduction to define a central question or thesis that your review will address, and keep referring back to this in each Section and in the Conclusion.  That way, the reader will understand how each particular section fits into the wider review.
• Summarise sections:  At the end of a section, before moving on, try to include a few sentences/statements to say where we are in the review – what is the take-home message of the previous section, and what are we going to look at next?  This helps to avoid abrupt transitions between sections.
• Numbered Sections:  Use numbered sections and subsections to break up large sections of text, and to make it easy to refer both forwards and backwards to different sections (signposting).
• Figures:  Make sure that figures are referred to in the main text, so that the reader knows when they should be looking at a particular chart, table, or diagram.  Ensure that the caption contains sufficient information to explain what the reader is seeing, and contains either a source (Author et al, yyyy) or a web URL for the origin.  Ensure figures have a sufficient size to be useful.
• References:  Avoid references to ‘NASA’, ‘ESA’, ‘Met Office’, etc. – if the information came from a weblink without a distinct author/year, use a footnote to provide the link.  If the information came from a primary source, use the ‘Author et al., (yyyy)’ format and include in your bibliography.
• Text boxes:  Sometimes definitions or brief digressions are required in a review, so make use of text boxes (placed in the document like figures and referred to in the main text) rather than breaking up the flow of the report.
• Columns:  The use of two columns helps to break up large blocks of text and is easier on the eye.
• Keep to the point:  Don’t be tempted to go off topic or to introduce information that isn’t relevant to the central theme of the project – this can just lead to confusion and dilutes your take-home messages.
• Proof-read:  Read it over and over again, even out loud, to make sure that the sentences flow together and make the points you’re intending.