Weeks 4 : Writing a Report & Making Apologies

Hi everyone..

How are you? I'm back with new material this week. I hope you will still stay on my blog. I hope you all can understand it.

 WRITING A REPORT & MAKING APOLOGIES

A. WRITING A REPORT 

When writing a report, you may need to use different past tenses to show sequences of events. You may also need to use more formal phrasing.

1. Past perfect and Past Simple

English uses the past perfect and the past simple together to describe past events that occurred at different times. The past simple describes the event that is closest to the time of speaking.

ex:

Sales of our cleaning products had fallen, so we hired a new marketing team.

- Past perfect : had fallen

- Past simple : hired

      2. Project reports

Here are some examples of formal language typically found in project reports.

• Formal alternative to "this report shows."

Ex : The following reports presents the results of a client satisfaction survey.

• Use the infinitive with "to" to talk about purpose.

Ex : The purpose of this report is to review our marketing expenditure.

• Formal reports often use the passive voice.

Ex: As can be seen in the table, we spent very little on social media marketing.

• Formal alternative to "said."

ex : Our clients stated that they had been disappointed with the sales figures.

• Formal alternative to "first."

Based on this initial research, we should increase our marketing budget.

• Formal alternative to "main."

ex : My principal recommendation is to create and launch a new campaign.

  B. MAKING APOLOGIES

• The present perfect continuous describes ongoing situations in the past that may affect the present.
• It can be used in apologies and to give reasons for problems.

1. Telephone apologies

English uses a variety of phrases for making apologies, offering to investigate a problem, and offering explanations and solution.

a) You can also say "so" or "really" instead of "very" to make an apology stronger.

ex : 

Ani   : I've been waiting for my order to arrive all week.

Bayu : I'm very sorry about that.

b) Use "hold the line a moment" to ask a costumer to stay on the phone while you investigate a problem.

ex :

Ayu : Could you hold the line a moment, please?

Ina  : OK.