Aim: This exercise is to help you to write report findings and
conclusions that describe how important something is.
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MS Word format.
Introduction:
The Findings section of a report often describes the results of questionnaires or
interviews. These often ask participants how important they think something is. However,
students sometimes have grammatical problems describing importance because they get
confused between 'important' and 'importance'.
Here is an example questionnaire item on importance of job satisfaction in choosing a career:
The results of the questionnaire can be written down in a table, like this:
| Table1: Results of a Questionnaire for Students on Factors in Choosing a Career (n=100) | ||||
| Question | Very Important (%) | Important (%) | Not Important (%) | Not at all Important (%) |
|
30 | 60 | 5 | 5 |
|
10 | 30 | 50 | 10 |
|
30 | 40 | 20 | 10 |
|
35 | 45 | 20 | 0 |
|
10 | 30 | 40 | 20 |
|
10 | 20 | 50 | 20 |
Note: (n=100) means that100 people answered the questionnaire correctly, and their answers are summarised here. 'n' stands for 'number'.
Example
Findings:
As shown in Table 1, the factors Job Satisfaction, Opportunities for Promotion
and Interest in the Job Nature were given the highest ratings for importance in choosing a
career. Well over half the students thought that Job Satisfaction was important, and
nearly a third rated it as highly important. The importance of Opportunities for Promotion
was shown by the 45% of students who regarded it as important and the 35% who saw it as
very important. Interest in the Job Nature also scored highly, with over two-thirds of
students saying that it was either important or very important. However, Opportunities to
Work Overseas, Parents' Wishes and Contribution to Society were seen as of lesser
importance, with over half the students regarding them as not important or not at all
important.
Grammar to describe importance:
| Word | Part of Speech | Example Phrase | Example Sentence |
| important | adjective | - extremely important - very important - quite important - not very important - not at all important |
Students saw Job Satisfaction as a very important factor. Contribution to Society was seen as very important by social work students. |
| importance | noun | - of very high importance - of high importance - of medium importance - of some importance - of little importance - of no importance - the importance of... |
Students saw Job Satisfaction as of great importance. Contribution to Society was seen as of great importance by social work students. The high importance of Interest in the Job Nature can be seen from the fact that 70% of students rated it as important or very important. |
| importantly | adverb | - very importantly - most importantly - more importantly - less importantly - least importantly |
Most importantly, students gave the highest rating to Job
Satisfaction, with nine out of ten students saying it was important or highly important. |
Exercise
Choose the correct word from the drop-down list: