Psych 156A/ Ling 150: Assignments

There will be several homeworks throughout the quarter, based on the material covered in class and in the reading selections. Usually, these will be due 1 week after they are assigned. They must be turned in during class the day they are due. Late assignments will be accepted, but will lose 10% of the total score possible on the assignment for every 24 hours late. Late assignments may be emailed to the instructor and teaching assistant (in .doc or .pdf format).

There will be several very short in-class quizzes throughout the quarter, usually comprising a small portion of whatever class period they occur in. These quizzes are open-note, but not collaborative (no group efforts, please). If you are caught collaborating during an in-class quiz, you will all receive a 0 for that quiz.

For the final assignment, you have your choice of either taking an in-class final exam or submitting a final paper. You only need to do one. However, if you are worried about your grade, you may choose to do both and take the higher of the two grades for this portion of your overall grade.

The final exam will be a closed-note, non-collaborative test that will be taken in class June 12, 4pm - 6pm. If you are found using any form of notes or collaborating with other classmates during the exam, you will receive a 0.

The final paper of the class will be a review of a longer article (or article sequence), as noted in the readings section. A review includes both a brief summary of the study as well as your own reactions/comments/critiques. Included in your review should be the following:

• the goal of the research article or article series (what problem does the article claim it addresses - this should usually be found in the abstract and the introductory paragraphs of the article)
• a summary of the methods and findings (the level of detail should be equivalent to the "brief literature reviews" that appear in the introductory sections of some of the articles themselves, e.g. Gambell & Yang 2006, Yang 2005, Gomez & Lakusta 2004, Mintz 2003...) You should provide enough detail so that someone who has not read the paper knows the main experimental/computational method used, the data/stimuli tested, and the results from these data/stimuli. These will usually be in the results and discussion section of the paper. Don't just state the results, though - describe what their relevance is to the problem the paper claims to address.
• a critical evaluation of the data and interpretation (this includes whether you think the article addressed the problem it said it did, if the article draws conclusions you agree with, any problems you foresee with the data or results when applied to other scenarios like different languages or bilingualism, etc.) Note that simply saying you disagree with something is not sufficient - you must provide justification for your comments. Why do you disagree precisely? Is there evidence you're thinking of, or an alternative explanation for the results you see in the paper?
• what impact these results would have on the "big picture" of language acquisition - does the study really show something that tells us about how language acquisition in the real world works? Why or why not? If this is a debate series, does the main question of the debate seem resolved, or are there still pieces of the argument that weren't sufficiently addressed in your opinion?

In addition, you should cite sources for any claims or evidence you present, and include those sources in a reference section at the end of your paper. Look to the citation usage and format within the papers themselves to get a sense of how to do it within your own review. Any time you make a claim or refer to evidence from a paper, for instance, cite that paper after you describe the claim or evidence in your review.

Length: Aim for 4 pages, double-spaced, for the content section of your paper. Content does not include the reference section at the end. However, keep in mind that the paper should really be as long as it needs to be to convey all the information above.