A Book Report and a Piece of Advice for Students
Book reports are a nightmare for most of the students. The reason is quite simple – such an assignment forces students to think critically over something they’ve read. In comparison to elementary grades, this task appears difficult at high school. In the elementary grades, children are usually given certain prompts and have to write about the certain details, such as a favorite character. However, becoming older, students are expected to analyze the book and draw conclusions independently.
Here we work with every single student individually in order to help to develop writing skills and avoid low grades and problems at school. We offer online writing course and our reports writing services provides reports of the highest quality!
Writing a Book Report
The most important step is reading! Don’t skip it. Choose such a book, which is enjoyable to you. Take a pen or a pencil and read carefully, noting down significant pages and pages. You will use these notes when writing.
However, it’s better not to write in a book, which is not your own.
A Book Report Outline
Start your book report writing with an outline. After you’ve read the book, you are ready to start writing. The best way to complete an assignment is to follow a traditional algorithm: prewriting and writing, revising and editing, publishing.
This paragraph of our set of tips is about prewriting. This is actually the first step and it can be very useful for further writing. An outline is a plan, which should correspond both with your ideas. Each of them is to be described in a nutshell in the following list:
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Summary
- 3. Characters
- 4. Plot
- 5. Conclusion and Assessment.
Writing down an outline is a great tool to organize your ideas and thoughts. It’s also important to remember that the report should meet the requirements of your teacher, so don’t forget to review them before starting an outline.
Introduction
Book/movie reports are a little bit personal, so it’s acceptable to express your thoughts, explain why you’ve chosen exactly this book, what you liked about it and what you disliked. Such a brief description should be a part of your introduction.
What is also important in the first paragraph of the book report? General information will not be superfluous. Don’t forget to mention author, genre, the book’s title (certainly!) and information about the publisher, date of publication and number of pages. Interesting facts about the book and its author are also a good idea.
Paragraphs 2-4
In these paragraphs you are expected to explain what the book is about and express your opinion clearly and convincingly. Exactly here you prove that you’ve read and understood the book. For those, who read fiction, our tips will be extremely useful.
Summary:
this part is quite general and it require minimal amount of your emotions. Just describe everything in a nutshell: the plot, characters, time period, overview of the story, atmosphere of the book.
Characters:
this part should be devoted to the main characters of the book and the main problems, the major conflict, which they are trying to solve. If you wish, you can also mention not only the main characters.
Plot:
most of the students make such a mistake in this paragraph: they are trying to describe every single detail of the plot. Don’t! Just depict it in general, mention the most important details, highlight the moments that impressed you, climax and conflict resolution. Try using terminology, you’ve studied in class.
Non-fiction Books
Maybe, non-fiction books, such as biographies can be interesting to some of students. In this case, a student should mention the most important events in the life of the person, who was described in the book. To represent the author’s point of view, you can appeal to the chapter headings. This way you will be able to outline author’s ideas and explain your own attitude to them in a proper manner. However, don’t tend to mention all the author’s ideas and arguments; just choose the most thought-provoking ones.
Conclusion and Assessment
Perhaps writing this paragraph is a pleasure to majority of the students because here you can express your opinion almost without limits. In this part of the review you can suggest your personal critique of what you’ve read. So, don’t forget to mention if the book held your interest, what you have learned from the book and what its strengths and weaknesses. If you are writing about fiction, describe how it affected you. If it was non-fiction, have the authors’ arguments convinced you?
Your main task is to provide good factual support to your opinion.
Revising and Editing, Publishing
The best way to publish a good book report is to write it beforehand. In this case, you have enough time to revise it and edit. Try revising it by reading the report aloud to your friends. This way, you’ll find out grammatical mistakes and style discrepancies easier. Check if the whole report is built in a logical way. When editing, pay attention to the quotes and the book title. Avoid all the possible mistakes in spelling.
A Book Report as an Expository Essay
A book report is usually an expository essay, though some teachers sometimes require another kind of academic writing. For example, a teacher can ask to take a point of view and explain your attitude to it in the book report. For instance, you need to write why a certain book is considered the most impressing book of the last century. Using examples and facts about publication of the book, you are to write a book report, which will persuade your classmates to read this book, too. In this case, don’t reveal the end, save the mystery!
The same can be said about the movie report writing.
Our company organizes online writing classes for students to help every single student to build strong writing skills. As soon as you develop really strong writing skills, you will forget about difficulties in completing any kind of academic assignment.
Indeed, we offer such online courses and workshops for children, starting from elementary school and ending with students from high school. Our courses have proven their efficiency and helped many students to develop their writing skills, improve grades and build confidence. We provide every student with a teacher for individual work during the course and this system works efficiently.