Academic Writing: Summary Report

On Day 3, 1 of 4 articles will be available for you to choose from on a relevant topic and your job is to summarize it in a two-page, double-spaced report. In your Summary Report, you should provide a clear and brief introduction to the subject, a brief description of the paper’s methodology and how it was used to generate the results. You should have a thorough and focused summary of the authors’ results, main findings, implications and future work. Give a brief description of the authors’ conclusions and remark on what you think the direction of the field will be in light of the authors’ findings (the experiment). Refer to the lecture notes on Day 3 for guidelines and things to ponder when summarizing your sections for your report. Finally, comment on the overall quality of the paper: - Were the arguments well-supported? - Were the experiments appropriate or would you suggest alternates? If so, indicate what they would be. You do not need to explain alternate experiments. - Were their results supportive of earlier work? If not, do the authors present a compelling case and explanation of why they differ from prior experiments - Were the conclusions justified in light of the data? Or would you offer an alternate conclusion? You are expected to have a preliminary Summary Report, in other words, a detailed draft, prepared for Day 4. The draft does not need to be submitted to turnitin.com. During the Day 4 lab, you will anonymously peer-edit a classmate’s Summary Report and provide them with constructive criticism to aid them in writing a better report. On Day 5, you will be doing a meta- analysis on a choice of 2 of the 4 articles given to you in class (Day 5). You are not expected to perform a meta-analysis on your Summary Report. The meta-analysis exercise on Day 5 will help you understand what to look for in a journal article and how to synthesize the information into a concise and clear manner (remember “the balance” between conciseness and clarity). The final Summary Report MUST be submitted to [login to view URL] and it is due 1 week after Day 5 before the start of your original lab time (e.g., 10am or 230pm). To be included in the Summary Report: - Summary Report (maximum 2 pages) o Paragraph 1: Importance of topic, introduction and methods and materials o Paragraph 2: Results and discussion with implications and possible future studies o Paragraph 3: Commentary on the experiment itself (not paper aesthetics) - Full Originality Report from [login to view URL] (with a score under 20% similarity) I'll provide the article which needs to be summarized. The deadline for the project is 7 AM EST on June 5, 2014. Only bid if you can meet deadlines.