Features of Academic Writing - Essay Example

Name: Instructor: Course: Date: Forensic fiber evaluation Title: Compare an academic assignment that you have written with another student’s paper on the same task. The comparison of the two texts is based on the features of academic writing. In academic writing, there are things that are common to the writers and should be met. The writing has a central theme as all of the parts contribute to the argument without any repetition. The focus of an academic writing is to inform the reader of something they do not know and are interested. The writing is standard as far as language is concerned since the language should be accurate and precise. This writing is thus formal, complex, explicit, objective responsible and hedged. Bazerman (1995, pp. 80-92) The task of the two assignments was the same as the students were asked to do a forensic fiber evaluation after they were presented with a similar case. The students are aspiring for degrees and are in their bachelor’s level of education. Both of the students were presented with a case where a small girl went missing and after some investigations, a particular man was linked with all evidences that made him guilty of the crime. The case focused on the use of fiber through forensic science to identify the suspect. The students were thus asked to do an evaluation of forensic fiber as their tasks where both wrote on the same. The students wrote essays on the topic where they were supposed to come up with a short writing on the subject. An essay should be in prose in discussion of forensic fiber evaluation. The task thus included definitions of terms and concepts, the analysis of how forensic fiber is evaluated and the techniques employed. By doing the assignment, the students were to learn the basics in forensic fiber and the application of forensic fiber in crime investigation to identify a suspect. Looking at the two assignments, they all meet the requirements in the assignment brief since the two students wrote their essays discussing the forensic fibre and their evaluation in a crime scenario to aid in the identification of the suspect. They both explain the fiber by giving its definition and its various features and characteristics. They go ahead and explain the relationship between fiber and crimes. The usefulness of fibers as tools in suspect identification was well discussed by both students. In their essays, they mention of the techniques used in the evaluation of the fiber and handle them separately. However, there are some differences in the two assignments on how the two students carried on with their essays. In the first assignment, the writer carefully describes what fiber is and how the forensic scientists use it in the identification of a suspect. The writer goes on describing the case rather than carefully showing how the forensic fiber is evaluated. When he writes about the techniques used in fiber evaluation, he forgets about the principle of the techniques and focuses more on the explanation of the equipments. From his essay, the reader does not glimpse the evaluation of forensic fibre but the kind of machines used. However, the techniques used are mentioned but vaguely. In the second assignment, ideas are well outlined as the writer moves from explaining the terms, explains the concepts and then goes deeply into explaining the techniques employed in the evaluation of fiber in the identification of a crime suspect. The ideas flow very well as he moves from one idea to the next. The assignment requirements and instructions from the instructor are well applied to the essay. The writer describes the principle of forensic fibre. For example, he puts it clear that for a fiber to be found on another garment, then there must have been contact between the two garments since fibers are individual. The assignment explains the techniques used in depth as the principle behind each is well outlined for the leader to follow. In this essay, the reader feels very happy reading it as all the necessary information is provided unlike in the first essay. Creme, and Lea (2008, pp. 124-133) For the first assignment, the writer telling the reader information that they already know wasted a lot of space as well as words. In his third, forth and fifth paragraphs he discusses of the victim and the suspect and how the fibers were collected. This piece of information had been given to the reader earlier and there is no point repeating it. Some of the many mistakes found in the first assignment were avoidable and the writer could have approached his writing with lots of care to avoid them. For example, the writer uses too many nouns that needed revision when he wrote “Many fiber evidence recovery techniques such as lifting, combing…” for a good academic paper, this is very wrong any writers need to take precautionary measures about it. The writer also is not aware that in essay writing short sentences works better. The use of long sentences is evident in his paper for example, “one of these things are the structure of hair that has three parts, starting with the medulla in the centre which can be fragmentary, or continuous, discontinous, or may not be observable, and it has three different types: lattice such as the hair in the deer family, amorphous such as the rabbit hair and vacuolated which has different shape and can be found in many animals, the second predominant portion is called the cortex which contains many different features, such as colour, pigment, size and distribution, the third portion of the outermost layer of hair is the cuticle which has scale structure of three different types, the spinous or petal scale that has triangular shape and can be found on seals and cats, the Imbricate scale and it is found on humans and other animals and the third type is called the mosaic scales.” Carter, Goddard, Danuta, Sanger and Bowring (1997, pp. 30-50) On the first assignment still, the referencing style is poor as it is not consistent with the writing styles. The reference materials in the reference page are not all present in the in text. This is not up to the standards of an academic write up since the reader of the paper is not able to see where the information was gotten. A writer should always be consistent with writing style they are asked to follow to make writing look professional. Sharples (1999, pp. 69-86) While referencing in the first assignment is poor, the writer of the second paper really adopted the APA style to reference all his used materials both in the text and in the referencing page. However, in the in text referencing, the writer did not follow the standard style which should be the author’s first name followed by the initial of the second name and the year it was published. For example, (Alexander, N., 2009). The in text referencing always should be in line with the referencing style one is using for the paper to be professional. All of the mistakes mentioned for both of the papers are avoidable only if the writer is careful and has a background of good writing practices. Of the two essays about evaluation of forensic fibers, the second assignment is better than the first assignment in a number of ways as mentioned above. The second assignment is very clear as to compared to one. The introductory paragraph leads the leader to the thesis making the leader to keep on reading the paper as it is very easy to understand what the writer is intending to bring out. As compared to the first assignment, definitions and explanations in the second assignment are well provides and the readers is able to fully understand the concept. Ideas are all presented in a well-organized order at all levels so that they make an easy to follow and logical line of thought. For example, in the first assignment the writer defined fiber as “fibers are thin, long, flexible, solid object with a high length to transverse cross section area ratio, which has different types that can split into natural fibers such as hair, wool, silk, cotton and flax, man-made such as nylon, polyethylene and polyester” while in the second assignment the writer defined it as “fiber is a very small unit of a textile material that has a high length to transverse cross-sectional area ratio”. The two assignments were well researched on as the materials the writer quoted both in the text and in the reference page evidence it. However, the flow in which ideas were arranged in the text differed and more credit goes to the writer of the second assignment. Ideas were well supported by relevant material, which is a very important feature in writing. By doing so the writers do not risk committing plagiarism, which is a very big crime for writers. They thus have credited the work of others from where they sourced the information in their texts. This was done by careful selection of the sources in that the sources are relevant to the task in question. If the reader therefore would want to clarify the ideas in the text, they can go back to the sources and confirm anything they want. This way cohesion was well achieved in the text and in the reference background. In the two assignments, there was evidence of grammatical errors where there was a lot of misspelling such as the use of the word fibre rather than fiber, and several other miss-spelt words. Other than the problem with miss spelling of words and passive voice usage, they adopted the use of vocabularies that are appropriate to the field of forensic science. These include, spectrophotometry, dispersive x-ray spectrometer, spectra among others. In conclusion, assignment two was better than one in a number of ways as it looks complex, formal and with lots of precision since facts are precisely given. He has emphasized on the information he wants to pass and thus employs the use of nouns more than verbs. The text is explicit in that different parts are well connected to make the flow of ideas easy to follow for the readers. Bazerman and Prior (2004, pp. 32-43) References Bazerman, C 1995, the informed writer: Using sources in the disciplines. Fifth edn. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Bazerman, C. and Prior, P 2004, what writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Carter, R., Goddard, A., Danuta, R., Sanger, K., and Bowring, M 1997, working with texts: A core book for language analysis. London and New York: Routledge Creme, P., and Lea, M. R 2008, writing at university: A guide for students. 3 rd edn. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press Sharples, M. 1999, how we write: Writing as creative design. London and New York: Routledge Read More