Summary-response

Summary/Response Essay

for the Marshmallow Test/Success Writing Project

For this assignment, you will write an academic essay suitable for a class in psychology, sociology, education, or an English composition course. In the first part of the essay, you will summarize the readings from the Success Writing Project. It is important to be clear, direct, and impartial when you summarize. In the next part of the essay, you will discuss your response to something that you found interesting about the research. In this portion, you will discuss your thoughts on the articles. You should clearly state what you found to be interesting and then develop your thoughts on the issue. The next paragraph provides some examples of what you might discuss in your response.

For example, do you agree or disagree with one of the findings or the research methodologies? If so, state the point of agreement and disagreement and present an argument to support your position. Another possibility: Do you have a related experience the connects to something in the readings to share? If so, explain the connection between your experience and the readings and describe it in detail. Do you have a proposal for how parents or educators can use the research findings to better parent or teach children? If so, present the proposal and persuade your reader why it is a good proposal.

Importantly, your response should NOT simply repeat or restate a summary of the articles.

To prepare you should

• read each article several times, • review the tips for summarizing and the summary you wrote of Kidd’s research, • review your notes from our discussions, and • draft an outline before you write. (Turn this in for my feedback)

The following is the BASIC OUTLINE. Use this as the starting point. Remember the PIE model. (You will find a template for the outline by clicking “NEXT.”

I. Introduction II. Summary of Mischel et al’s research (You can combine the two articles into one paragraph

or discuss each one separately) III. Summary of Kidd’s research IV. Summary of research described in Calarco’s article V. Summary of “We didn’t eat the Marshmallow. The Marshmallow Ate Us.” VI. Your Response. (1 or 2 paragraphs). Extra credit is you bring in an additional academic

source to support your discussion. VII. Conclusion

Please pay special attention to information about the due dates. I will explain them in class and they are available within the essay’s dropbox on Canvas.