"Please finish writing the report as soon as possible."

Translation: 请尽快把报告写完。

[bobking12]

Why can you not say: 请尽快写完报告?

[yession]

I answered the same and was marked wrong, but as a native speaker of Chinese, it sounds totally acceptable.

[Dr_Jerry]

You totally can. Your average Mainland Chinese is going to use the less-formal construction you have used.

[kokaku]

and more generally can someone break down the word order and what's optional or open to different ordering?

[dddcaprio]

请尽快把报告写完 is more like "please get the report written ASAP". here, "写完" is the state that the speaker wishes to have the report be ("written").
请尽快写完报告 is more like "please write the report ASAP". here, "写完" is a verb ("finish writing").

[KX3.]

There are different ways of expressing this but in this sentence every word is needed in its place.

请 (please) + 尽快 (as soon as possible, as fast as you can) + 把 (supporting word)+ 报告 (report) + 写 (write) + 完 (finish)。

把 has to be in that place and is a 介词 which helps form phrases.（介词总是同其他的词组合在一起，构成介词短语，做定语、状语和补语。）

"Please finish writing the report as soon as possible." On another note, I think "Please complete the report soonest possible" should also be accepted.

[llfoolj]

"Please complete the report soonest possible" isn't correct in English. Maybe you mean "at the soonest time possible?"

[KX3.]

I do; it is colloquial, not proper, strictly correct English, sorry about that.

[hippietrail]

In this case it's not even colloquially correct I'm afraid.

[RanzoG]

It's accepted now, 2020 January.

[Charlimagnus]

@bobking12 I think its grammatically incorrect to have a modifier between the verb and the object in Chinese. In your answer the modifier 完 is between the verb 写 and the object 报告. For the sentence to be grammatically correct you have to use the 把 structure as they did in the answer.

[juanluisme845441]

请尽快写完了这张报告... should be accepted

[Username19636]

Yes but without 了