Background

Writing incident reports can be daunting if you do not possess a certain level of language skills. First and foremost one has to know where to start, what to look for and then how to put all the relevant findings into a report. In most incident reports, objectivity in putting the facts across is important. Ideally, it should not contain any pre-judgment or biasness or lay unsubstantiated blame in its findings.  Language used for the report would have to be couched. In countries where the English language is a second language, the use of English tends to be direct and can be crude. This programme seeks to address those issues with the ultimate aim of making an incident report understandable, objective, impersonal and professional.


Proposal

This one day course will expose and assist technicians/engineers to write more understandable and professional reports.

It will cover:
  Layout
     – the different stages of the report should include so that there is a smooth flow of events.
  Purpose
     – so that everyone knows the objective of the report.
  Narration of Events
     – Use of linkers and cohesive language devices to indicate sequence;
        techniques of cause and effect writing, substantiating, couching language.
  Accuracy
     – using the right words for the meaning you want to convey.


Methodology

Participants will be led through the basics of report writing for incident reporting via lectures and a workshop approach. The session will be heavily participatory with the purpose of identifying essentials that should go into the paragraphs of the report and appropriate language used for content to be understandable and coherent and professional. General weaknesses in writing would be targeted and corrected.


Size of Class

As this course will be conducted on a “hands-on” approach where individual attention is given, classes should not be more than 15. Participants should have at least an intermediate level of the English language.


Biodata of Speaker

Lena Khaw’s first language is English. She obtained degree in Mass Communication in year 1973. She is competent in nearly all the topics in the English language. Concerned about the growing difficulty of Malaysians in expressing themselves in good understandable English especially at the workplace,  she embarked on equipping herself with credentials to teach English as a 2nd language targetted at working adults.
Coupled with her vast experience in writing reports especially government technical reports for management, she now teaches not only English Proficiency courses but combines it with techniques for special writing skills like Technical, Business and Report Writing. With her not only will you learn the linguistic content of the English language, but also the context in which the content would be most applicable in the  targeted area which is technical report writing in this 1 day workshop