MUET Report Writing Sample / Template

So one of the biggest hurdles for both teachers of MUET and candidates is how to handle the report writing question. Having done so many talks over the years, I have finally come up with a colour coded version of teaching Report Writing, MUET style.. the closest and easiest possible way for everyone to understand and apply. Let it be said here that there are always advantages and disadvantages to teaching using templates. First and foremost, every MUET report writing question is different and therefore it may not be possible to transfer the skills into writing if the content strays from mainstream/what is expected. The advantage of a template is that it helps the very weak to see the pattern and to hopefully be able to replicate the pattern in the exam. Might I be so bold as to add that mark schemes with a rigid template is actually quite biased to those who have been exposed to it, but will definitely shortchange very good students who somehow have never seen/heard of/learnt the template or those who used their own interpretation to write their reports. The rigidity of the 200 word limit and enforced format for report writing seems to me a poor way of judging a person's proficiency. But hey, I'm just a teacher, who am I to comment on the choice of questions made by the exams syndicate? In comparison, the report section in the IELTS exam is not confined to such rigidity and I hope someday, we can also move away from short-sighted assessments like this report question.

Coming back to the issue, you can study the series of pictures here to get a gist of how I now teach report writing, ie using colour coding. Note that a successful analysis needs 2 elements: Blue+Yellow (trend word + data) and likewise, a successful Synthesis needs 3 elements: Blue+Yellow+Red (trend word + data + synthesis linking phrase). Note also that data does not denote only numbers and statistics (ie. information/phrases in a table are also data). A final not is that if the student copies these phrases or the titles using inverted commas, "..." or '...' (single or double, doesn't really matter) and makes sure that it is verbatim (exact phrases and spelling), then the whole item is counted as 1, just as any number in brackets are counted as 1. Anyway, happy teaching! & Good luck to those taking the exam on 5th August 2017... including my students this year. Yeeehaw!