Talk:Psycholinguistics/A comparison of language processing in Chinese and English

Hi Minzhou,

First glance of the paper

Formatting

At first glance I would say that the first thing that jumps out at me is your formatting. I think your chapter would flow better if it was broken down into more sub-headings, instead of having giant blocks of text staring you in the face. Sub-headers are also great because they provide your reader with more context, i.e. they know what they're going to be learning about specifically. An example would be your English Grammar System. It would probably flow better if it was broken down into:

English Grammar System

A quick discussion of morphemes/phonemes, etc

Syntax

I think that is really important to keep in mind when re-formatting your chapter because text books DO use sub-headers all the time. This is because as a reader, if you see a giant block of text, you really do not want to read it. You can easily solve this problem by having sub-headers!

Your reference list also jumped out at me. The first thing was that you wrote Reference rather than References. That may be being nit-picky, but it's something that was really obvious to me. Another thing would be that your links should be integrated into the references section, instead of being stand alone. Just reference them like any normal reference: Wikipedia. (2011). Title page. Retrieved on February 23, 2011 from 'link'.

Errors

There are lots of little word errors throughout the paper as well. I would advise a thorough review of it, and maybe even a peer reviewer. One trick that helps you to recognize errors really quickly is to read the sentences backwards. Examples of errors are:

"English, as will as other Indo-European languages (e.g., French, German), is an alphabetic language"

"In spoken English, the phonemes are combined to create syllables. which are typically, a consonant-vowel-consonant combination (i.e., three phonemes), though there are variations." <- Another error with this sentence (aside from the lack of the capital W) is that you shouldn't start a sentence with "which"!

"More typically, words are altered by suffixes or prefixes when changing categories (e.g., noun and verb forms of a word typically differ Syntax constrains the sequential word order (word categories) by defining aspects like word order, subject-verb agreement (Liu, Li, Shu, Zhang & Chen, 2010)." <- This seems like it was two sentences, and you just forgot to put a period in between! This is really distracting as a reader because I feel like I'm reading one giant sentence that just doesn't make sense. Also, you have a parentheses that is never closed, and as a reader I'm wondering where the heck the closing part of the parentheses is!

"is very maturely in Western countries. In this type of studies" <- Should be "is very mature" or just "is mature", as well as "in these types of studies"!

Errors are tricky because if you've been writing for a while, or you read your own writing, it's easy to miss them! That's why a peer reviewer is really good, because they can point these issues out to you (I guess like I'm doing). One problem I find that I personally have is that when I am reading my own writing, I tend to leave words out and when I re-read, I mentally insert the words as I read along, so I don't pick up on the mistakes. Or I don't explain something in enough detail, because in my mind, I already know how it's supposed to work/sound but a general reader wouldn't be able to understand! These are traps that everyone falls into though, so don't feel badly!

Sources

Another thing is that you cited the textbook a lot. In the peer review.pdf Dr. Newman says that you shouldn't be citing the textbook. You can probably easily find other sources to back up what you're saying. Also, I would say that some of your sentences really should have more references. For example, when you talk about morphemes/phonemes in the English Grammar System. I know that we learnt this stuff in class, but this stuff isn't really "common" knowledge, especially to someone who is uneducated in Psycholinguistics, so it's really useful to provide sources so that a reader can see where you're getting this information from, and they can read up on the information themselves. I suggest looking in the introductory paragraphs of research papers, they typically talk about this type of background information which is really useful!

Introduction

Your introduction is very short. As the reader I feel as though I'm unaware of what I will be reading. The introduction is supposed to be an area to set up your chapter: tell the reader what they're going to be learning, i.e. go into detail! It's okay to say that "This chapter focuses on light bulbs: when they were invented, who invented them, discovery of electricity, how they're made." It's okay to be concise, but this is just way too short.

Pictures

Your chapter could use some pictures. If you go to WikiCommons, you can probably find some pictures of English words and Chinese words which would maybe help the reader understand the difference between the two! It'd just be really nice to see some pictures, because they also help break up text.

Framework for Letter Grade

Based on the first glance, and from the Framework for Letter Grades provided by Dr. Newman, I would give you a B/C for the paper. This is because as I read through the framework, I marked your chapter as having these characteristics: used a variety of research (A), spelling/grammar mistakes begin to interfere with reading flow (B), generally good use of style manual - some inconsistencies (B), some inconsistency in the typed format (B), body contains research evidence (C), intro does not indicate purpose, seems irrelevant to paper (D).

In depth reading

Flow

After reading your chapter in depth, I felt like the flow for your chapter was kind of off. I felt as though there were some jumps, but other sentences logically progressed into one another. Transition sentences at the end of a paragraph would be a great help for this issue (i.e. set up what you're going to talk about in the next paragraph). Based on the framework, this is about a B: "logical flow is not always evident" (C), "some transitions between paragraphs and ideas" (B), "under use of transition statements and linking sentences" (B), and "general progression that builds on a central theme" (B). I found that this only really applied for your English Grammar System part though, and that the Chinese Grammar System did flow really well! I'd give you an A for that section. :)

However, a transition sentence to go between Chinese Grammar System and ERPs would be good. I felt a bit taken by surprise to be suddenly reading about ERPs! I also felt like the ERP section didn't connect well to the latter two paragraphs. You'd be better off to have a header of "English vs Chinese Semantic Processing" and then break it down into "how ERPs" work for a little blurb, then go into detail contrasting English to Chinese processing.

Sources

I'd put more sources into your ERP section, again because it's not "common" knowledge to others. It is for us, because we're doing Psychology/Neuroscience, but to someone who has an English degree, or is just in high school, they may need some more information/sources to read up a bit more about it!

The Researches of English Semantic and Syntactic Processes

Firstly: this title is grammatically wrong. Researches just sounds very bizarre, though I know what you're getting at. I think you'd be better off having a header of: English Semantic and Syntactic Processes vs Chinese Semantic and Syntactic Processes through ERP studies. This would accurately convey everything you're saying, and then you could break it down into sub-headings of: Background of ERP, English Processing, Chinese Processing.

I didn't see a lot of syntactic processing in this section, you mostly focused on semantic. I'd also recommend maybe having some more sources. I know that you're not writing a chapter about Semantics/Syntax, but a little bit of background information or even just linking to the textbook chapters that DO discuss these things would be good to include! I think a compare and contrast would be good to have instead of splitting it into two headers though. Like, English language shows blah blah blah but this isn't seen in Chinese language processing, instead this is seen (random interesting contrasting fact)!

Errors

"These conditions are correct condition (has correct sentences), semantically incorrect condition (has sentences with semantic violations), syntactically incorrect condition (has sentences with syntactic violations) and combined correct condition (has sentences with both semantic and syntactic violations)." <-I feel like this sentence really needs a source.

"In auditory study of semantic and syntactic process, Friderici, Gunter, Hahne & Mauth (2003) noted that N400 was found in semantic violated condition." <- Friederici's name is incorrectly spelled. I only know this because I did the Syntax in the Brain chapter, and I had to spell her name like a thousand times.

The Researches of Chinese Semantic and Syntactic Processes

I feel like your sentences don't have enough citations. However, check with Dr. Newman or the TA because there's probably a way to cite the same reference only once in APA format. I'm just of the mentality that "if it's not my own ideas/thoughts/knowledge, cite it!" so I cite everything...

Errors:

"when there was a dragon actually came to his place, he was scared to death." <- This is grammatically wrong. It should be like "when a dragon actually came to his house".

Overall Conclusions

Firstly: I find this topic really interesting, so that's why I decided to review your chapter! I feel like I really learnt a lot about Chinese, and how it's different from English. I found that the portions of the chapter where you discussed Chinese were really in depth and very concise, clear, and flowed well but the parts about English language didn't flow as well for me. I understand that it's a broad topic, but there's probably a way to do it so that the English portions of the paper flow really well too!

There's a lot of little grammatical errors, but those are easily fixed. I pointed out the ones that I noticed and I hope that that's helpful. If you could have a friend re-read it, that'd be great too because the more people who read your chapter, the more feedback you can get. :)

Based on the grade rubric I would give you these grades:

Research: I would give you a B because you: "used a variety of different sources" (A), "most of the relevant authoritative sources were used" (A), "most viewpoints were supported well" (B) (I felt like the English portions could have used more sources), "not all major contrasting viewpoints were considered" (C) (I felt as though you didn't review a lot of different papers that may have found different/conflicting results. I know for the semantics/syntax section, there are a lot of papers that conflict in what they found!).

Logic/Organization: For the Chinese sections of the chapter I'd give you an A because it had: "logical flow" (A), "clear progression of ideas building on a central theme" (A), "clear transitions between paragraphs and ideas", "effect use of transition statements and linking statements" (A). For the English sections/ERP I'd give you a B because: "logical flow is not always evident" (C), "general progression that builds on a central theme" (B), "some transitions between paragraphs and ideas" (B), "under-use of transition sttements and linking sentences" (B).

Answers Questions/Makes Argument: I'd give you a B+ for this because you had 1/2 A's and 1/2 B's for the paper. I found this part tricky to grade though because you're not really arguing anything for these text book chapters, you're just laying out facts (in general, not specifically your paper). However I based this on: "makes the point" (A), "relevant to stated purpose" (A), "good evidence" (B) (I think more sources would be appropriate), "shows thought and analysis but lacks clear focus or pointedness" (B) (more specifically for the sections on English).

Writing: I would give you a B for this section. Again, a lot of the sections about Chinese language were superbly written but the English parts lacked. Also lots of little errors throughout the paper. I based this on: "consistent in tense and person" (A), "acknowledged all sources, contributors" (A), "spelling/grammar mistakes begin to interfere with reading flow" (B), "generally good use of style manual - some inconsistencies" (B), "some inconsistency in the typed format" (B) (The way you sourced references changed sometimes).

Structure: I'd give you a B- for this part... I just really found some parts difficult to read based on lack of headers/introduction. I based it on: "body contains research evidence" (A), "integration of ideas is less obvious, not as well connected" (B) (Transition sentences would fix this!), "intro does not indicate a purpose, seems irrelevant to paper" (C), "body generally connected intro" (C), "conclusion is very brief or missing" (F) (you just sort of ended your chapter, a concluding paragraph would fix this!)

Anyways, I hope that this helps! Sorry if it's really more in depth than you expected. Again, this was really interesting to learn about and I'm really glad I picked your chapter to review!

Alicataroo 23:47, 23 February 2011 (UTC)