Wednesday, 23 October 2013

MUET Report Writing : Profile of Professionals & Their Main Goals





Guidelines to write this report:

1)Introduction
Begin with the phrase "The tables show ...... and ......" or "Table 1 shows .... while Table 2 shows ...."
As usual, use the headings of the tables.

2) Overview
Yes! This report only has an Overview ( and not an Overall Trend). Why? because there is no movement in the data. So avoid "Trend" words like "increase/increasing"; "decrease/decreasing", etc

There's also no cause-and-effect relationship between the tables. So, observe the difference in the ranking of the main goals according to the two different age groups. Write about this as the Overview.

3) Analysis
To write the analysis and synthesis, these are a few things you need be aware of:
1) The goals (1st column in Table 2) are the the key features
2) You need the ranking words (or the Analysis words, as I call them): higher/lower than, the highest/lowest, topped/top-ranked/top priority, last.
3) This question is about ranking of goals. So in your Analysis (Table 2) or Synthesis, you need to use "was/were ranked"; "ranked" or other similar words to show the ranking of goals.
4) What's in the columns & rows (all the numbers in Table 2, the percentages, RMs, number of years) are the data.

Analysis Table 1: 
Compare the average income, average work experience and marital status of the two groups of professionals. Use "higher than", "lower than", "more", and/or "less"
Refer to the two groups according to their positions, as "senior managers" or "junior executives".
You may also refer to them as "professionals of age group ( 46-55 or 18-27) years" but this is rather long. If you want to use this phrase, please limit the use to only once or twice in your report.

Example: " The average income of the senior managers (RM10,000) was higher than that of the junior executives (RM3000)"

Analysis Table 2:
For Analysis in this table, you compare the ranking of the goals according to the two groups of professionals.

You can use all the Analysis words I mentioned in No 2 above (higher/lower than, the highest/lowest, topped/top-ranked/top priority, last) and write the respective Analysis. Of course, these words must be used with the words "ranked", "was/were ranked", etc because that's what we are discussing/explaining : the ranking of the goals.

Example: "The senior managers ranked [goal] the highest [at no ...] while the junior executives ranked it lower [at no ...]". YES! YOU MUST STILL COMPARE THE TWO COLUMNS!  The number (of ranking) must be given as that is DATA.

4) Synthesis
To write the Synthesis successfully, you must connect, link or relate the information between both tables. Yet, the connection or link must be logical. So you need to be aware of these details:
                               
PROFILE
KEY FEATURES
1
Age Group
Be more healthy
2
Position
Improve technology skills
Improve communication skills
3
Average Income
Make more money
Save money
4
Average Work Experience
Improve technology skills
Improve communication skills
5
Marital Status
Make new friends
Spend more time with family

What it means is, if you write the senior managers ranked the goal of being more healthy the highest, it is because of their age (mention the age); like this:
" The senior managers ranked be more healthy as the highest (at No 1) because they were older (46-55 years old)"

So whatever key features/goals you would like to write on, link or relate them to the profile as given in the table.

A more advanced Synthesis sentence is to compare both groups of professionals profiles as well as ranking of goals in one sentence like this:
"The older professionals with 20 years of working experience, ranked improving technology and communication skills as 5th and 6th respectively while the younger professionals with 5 years working experience ranked them 2nd and 3rd respectively"

"The older professionals with 20 years of working experience" - Profile / Table 1
"ranked improving technology and communication skills as 5th and 6th respectively" - Ranking of goals/ Table 2.
"the younger professionals with 5 years working experience" - Profile / Table 1
"ranked them 2nd and 3rd respectively" - Ranking of goals / Table 2

* Take note that a successful Synthesis sentence must contain the Key Features + Ranking/Trend/Analysis words + Profile.

5)Conclusion
The conclusion is just a restatement of the Overview. Avoid using the Overview as the conclusion.
Changing the sentence structure of the Overview is a good way to restate. If  your Overview earlier is in the Active Voice, now write the conclusion in the Passive Voice.
Another way is to change the words to other words of similar meaning. For example, if you use "different age groups" in the Overview, now use "the two groups of professionals" in the conclusion.



OKAY THEN.
HAPPY TRYING WRITING & HAPPY WRITING, EVERYONE!

Thursday, 3 October 2013

Sample Argumentative Essay 2

Question:
Living away from parents is different from living with them. Give your opinion by providing relevant examples. Write your essay in about 300-350 words.

            Where is he now? Is he in a good condition? It has been almost two months your brother has not come home. These are the common phrases that have always been said by my mother. Working as an army officer makes my brother always living far away from my parents. Without a doubt, I can say that living away from parents strengthen relationships, brings about less problems, and we can train ourselves to be independent.

            First, relationships between parents and sons or daughters will be stronger. When we live far away from them, they will always think of us. The phrase “Miss you a lot” will always stick in their hearts. I think it is normal for us that if we bump into someone we always see everyday, in our mind we would think that we would bump into him or her again tomorrow and thus we will not miss him or her. However, if we live far from parents, it will be different. They will think of us, miss us and visit us whenever they have some free time. Not only that, we will call them or they will call us whenever they feel like talking to us. We also will sometimes spend more time chatting with them on the phone than when we are at home. As a result of this, our relationship with them will become stronger and closer.

            Secondly, if we live far from our parents, more problems can be avoided. Our parents will rarely be angry at us as they do not know about our activities and behaviour. It is not that we are trying to hide our bad attitude but sometimes parents are very strict in imposing rules or living up to a tradition or cultural need. As an example, a young Malay girl might not be allowed to sing in the kitchen at her home when it is actually something that can be done almost anywhere. Moreover, when living far from parents, they will think twice to scold us if we did anything wrong as we only stay with them for a short time and they might not want to spoil our holidays with them. Thus, many problems can therefore be avoided if we do not live with them.

            Finally, living far from parents will make us more independent. House chores such as washing clothes and cooking will have to be done ourselves. Other than that, we also will need to solve any problem we have ourselves. We will not be totally dependent on our parents. If we depend too much on out parents, we might be spoilt. What will happen then if they leave this world? Are you going to go with them or create problems for other people as you want to be treated like how you are treated by your parents? So, living far from parents will make us more independent as we have to rely on ourselves more to carry out chores and to solve problems.


            In a nutshell, living away from parents has more advantages as it leads us to train ourselves to stand on our two feet. We will have our own lives and will be responsible people. We will also not drag our parents into our problems and let them enjoy their lives in their golden age.