During the course of the semester, you will be writing two papers. For both of them, your assignment is to read an assigned reading from Forty Studies that Changed Psychology, and write a response paper based on that reading. In each half of the semester, you will be given a list of three readings. All readings are from the Forty Studies book and the topics are related to the lecture and textbook materials at that time. You task is to choose one out of the three to read thoroughly and write a response paper. Your response paper is expected to include the following elements:
1). Summary of the reading: a. What was the core issue? b. What was the researchers' theoretical proposition? c. How was the study/studies conducted? d. What was the result and how was it interpreted?
2). Your critical reflection: a. Evaluate the importance of the research (contribution to the field, significance of the finding, etc..) b. How do you evaluate the method the researchers chose? (If you like it, why? If you don't like it, do you think an alternative method might have been adopted?) c. How might the findings enlighten future research in psychology or in other disciplines? d. Do you think the finding can be related to your everyday life? How?
The format requirement of the two response papers is identical. In other words, you’ll be writing one of these papers in the first half of the course, and the other one in the second half. The only difference between them is the topics.
Required Format:
- Each of the two papers should be minimum 3 pages in length. That’s typed, font size 12, in Times New Roman, 1 inch- margins, double-spaced, and 3 pages of actual text that you yourself write.
- Citation: Whenever you reference another author's work in your writing, you should cite this person, both in text and on your reference page. There are many citation conventions you can choose for academic writing. APA is the citation style psychologists adopt when writing academic articles. Although we do not require you to follow APA style in its entirety for this paper, you should follow the specified minimum in this guideline. Here is an example of proper citations:
In text citation: example 1: According to Jones (1998), APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners. example 2: APA style is a difficult citation format for first-time learners (Jones, 1998)
Citation on reference page: Jones, J. C. (1998). How to write APA style articles. Journal of XXX, 15, 1-16.
Paper #1 is due by 11:59pm, Sep.30 (Tuesday).
Paper #2 is due by 11:59pm, Nov.4 (Tuesday).
Submitting Papers. Papers must be submitted electronically on SafeAssign via your class' Blackboard site. Late paper will receive a point deduction (2 points per day until zero). No hard copies will be accepted.
Grading of Papers. The papers will be graded on a 20-point basis. That is, there are 40 paper points total, 20 for each of the two papers.
Returning the Papers. Your TA will grade your paper with comments and grading notes. They will NOT return your graded paper proactively unless you ask for it. Do ask for your graded paper or meet with your TA if you have any questions or concerns about your graded paper. Plus, it is probably very helpful to read their comments.
Plagiarism. You must avoid plagiarism when writing your paper. Plagiarism is any instance in which you include in your own paper material that is copied from another source, and fail to put that material in quotation marks and properly to cite the original source. If your paper includes material that was written by another student (at UIC or elsewhere), that also is plagiarism. Plagiarism is a serious academic offense. It is a violation of University guidelines regarding academic integrity. (These guidelines, for your information, are stated in the Undergraduate Course Catalogue.) Any amount of plagiarized material will cause you to receive zero credit for
