Assignment

Argument Summarization ● Summarize the paper in one paragraph ● Make sure you cover the following components:

○ The main conclusion(s) of the paper (Conclusion) ○ What data and evidence the paper has considered (Findings) ○ How the data and evidence was collected (Methods)

● If the paper has an abstract, your summary should not simply repeat what the abstract says

Example

“Wiekum et al (2009) suggest that “visual speech information alone is sufficient for language discrimination in infancy” [Conclusion 1]. They examined 72 English monolingual 4, 6, and 8-month-old infants using silent videos from their native language (English) and an unfamiliar language (French). 36 infants watched one language and midway the language was switched (test condition) and for 36 other infants the language was kept the same (control condition). Longer looking time at the video by infants was interpreted as noticing the change in language [Methods 1]. 4 and 6-month-old Infants looked significantly longer when the language switched but not 8-month-old infants [Finding 1]. They similarly compared English monolingual 6 and 8-month-olds with 24 French-English bilingual 6- and 8-month-old infants [Methods 2]. They found that while at 6-months both monolingual and bilingual infants looked longer at the change of language, at 8 months only the bilingual infants looked significantly longer and not monolingual infants [Finding 2]. They concluded that bilingual infants maintain the discrimination abilities needed for separating and learning multiple languages. [Conclusion 2]”

In the example above, green square brackets are used to highlight how the conclusion, methods, and findings are covered but you do not need to explicitly mark these components this way.