Forensic Analysis of Personal Written Texts Research Paper - 1

Forensic Analysis of Personal Written Texts - Research Paper Example etermining patterns or possession of shared features by classifying the analysis under word level (demonstrative determiner, activity verb, frequently used words); clause level (sentence type, run ons and fragment, clause type, copula, preface and coordination); and whole text level (reference and rhetoric). A concluding portion would summarize the results to validate the contention to be revealed under the general analysis. The three separate and distinct texts are written by students from the class Structure of English and the task is to establish the authorship of the three texts through both linguistics and forensic analysis. The three texts are labeled as Text 1 (5), Text 2 (9) and Text 3 (5a). The three texts are writing experiences of students taking English as Second Language course (ESL). Text 1 shared the challenges of experiencing learning in their reading classes where some suggestions for teachers’ instructional methods were provided. Text 2 was more specific in providing examples that revealed the Chinese culture from where the student apparently came from. The student who wrote Text 2 wrote using the past tense with intermittent present tenses; the punctuation marks, specifically the periods were situated in the right location, unlike the author of Text 1. Finally, the author of Text 3 situated the periods the same way as that of the author of Text 1. Further, the use of ‘skimming and scanning’ was repeated both in Text 1 and Text 3, so one surmised that Text 1 and 3 are written by the same author. After due examination and counting of linguistic features of the three texts in word, clause and whole-text level referring to the book Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English and Robert Eagleson’s Forensic Analysis of Personal Written Texts: A Case Study, a tabular representation of results that appeared in the three texts would indicate if my contentions is supported. Activity Verb: Another feature reflecting the different lexical