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Book reports can help learners improve their reading comprehension and enhance their ability to analyze the story and the characters. Generally speaking, a book report is usually composed of three major parts. They are: information about the writer (his name, the books he has published, the years of his birth and death, the publisher of the book) a summary of the book (the story and main characters) some comments on the book (personal interpretation of the meaning of the book) When giving the information about the writer, the learner writer should include some historical and social background to which the book is related. To make things clear, the learner writer should read some reference materials, such as biographies of the writer and histories of the period in which the book was written. A book report should contain a summary of the book under discussion. The summary should be concise, clear and easy to understand. The learner writer should make sure that the summary be subjective and center on the major theme of the book. As for the tense of the book report, it depends on the subject matter of the book. If it is a novel or a play or a science fiction, the present tense is more appropriate while the past tense is required for nonfiction such as history books. The third part and also the most important part of a book report is the comment. In this part, the learner writers job is to evaluate the book according to his or her own personal interpretation and discuss the merits (优点) and demerits (缺点) of the book, the social and/or historical significance of the book. If the learner writer is competent enough to discuss the writing style of the author, he or she should feel free to do so. | 
