Talk:Psycholinguistics/Reading

Psycholinguistics peer review: letter grade A Research: • You provide a very thorough review of literature and excellent supporting articles to illustrate your points. • You could include a figure illustrating brain area implicated in reading. • Excellent variety of sources (books, articles etc.) • Could provide more current viewpoints and contrasting ideas • Excellent support of arguments, though it doesn’t hurt sometimes to include multiple sources for some of the more key points even just to emphasize how widely accepted or refuted their point is • It might be good to also include different viewpoints about “ways to read” and not just Erhis point of view • It might be interesting to include a small chunk or concluding paragraph touching on ways of teaching reading logic / Organization: • It would be a nice to add a section on the psychological consequences of reading on language production and perception and development, but perhaps not in the “what is reading” chunk, it could be its own chunk. Your chapter however is not lacking in content or length, so do not feel pressured to include this section though if you have already done or found some research on it, including it wouldn’t hurt. • Instead of having a separate section about what reading is, I would just continue the intro paragraph as your “what is reading” component. You seemed to define it well already in the intro, it seems redundant to do it again. I would just delete this subheading • It might be good to quickly describe who Ehri is (early reading researcher or something). Often in textbooks, when someone is so heavily cited, there is some mention of who they are and what their contribution to the field was. • It would not hurt to provide an introductory paragraph to the section on ways to read, to clarify that it was included at that point delibartely because as it is it just sort of seems like it was thrown in there. This section could be its own major subheading. • Excellent layout and flow of ideas: I would not change much if at all about the way you have ordered the subheadings. • Probably do not need to include section on reading sign could just mention in overall concluding paragraph, as this online book of ours already has sections on production and perception of sign languages so you could delete the section on “other models”. • Under models of reading, though you chose focus on the main one, are there others and why might they be dismissed while the DRC is so widely accepted? This would show that there is a lot of research in the area and that despite other models, this one is still the best. • It would not hurt to include some transition statement or ideas to further the flow even more. Such statements/ideas would also show the reader that your choice of order of arguments and topics is deliberately chosen and necessary. Analysis/integration: • Excellent comprehensive discussion of models of reading. It is great that you did include the strengths and fallbacks of each model. • It might be helpful to take a closer look at the way that you described the models: that was the only chunk that really slowed me down while reading it. Perhaps try describing the models to a friend who is not in our class and doesn’t really have much background knowledge about cognitive models of reading. It was a little bit confusing ( such a willing friend might be hard to come by I understand) Answers Questions/ Makes arguments: • Great choice of literature support of main ideas, lots of applicable evidence. • Make sure that it is clear why you chose to include each piece of literature cited and how it directly applies to that subheading. There were some sections about previous literature/findings/specific studies that lacked transition statements, which made it unclear as to how they directly apply to that subheading. Writing style: • When citing authors in your sentence it is typical to include the year of publication in brackets at the end of the sentence • Be careful with long sentences. It is often helpful to break long sentences for clarity (my short term memory is way too short for long sentences and I truly appreciate textbooks that just break it down) • Double-check your use of colons and semi-colons, though I think you were spot on for the most part. There are good rules for using each outlined in the following website http://www.libraryonline.com/default.asp?pID=32 • Very clear and concise, excellent choice of words. • Writing style very appropriate for target audience, the level of information and explanation was spot for the most part, however there were a few spots where more explanation or definitions of what might seem like common knowledge to us, because we are taking a class on it, would be very convenient and appreciated by readers who are new to the subject. These spots are highlighted in the attached corrected copy of your chapter. • Be consistent with which words you italicize or put in quotations • Everything was very esthetically pleasing and easy to read. All of it was very clear except for chunk on models, could use a bit of tweaking to make it more clear. • Reference section is awesome. I am not sure that you need to include where things are cited (i.e. cite in blah blah blah) but it never hurts, great job. • I have attached a PDF with some specific suggestions about writing style and areas that could use more explanation. Structure: • You probably don’t nee to include the fun facts part as fun as it is. Instead you could just include the fun facts as they apply to each topic (embedded within each subheading) • Well-organized and easy to follow. As mentioned above it might be helpful to include an image about the brain areas. • You could include a concluding paragraph, it might tie things up nicely. • As mentioned above it would be good to double check that you have intro and concluding statements between subheadings. If you message me i would like to send you a marked up word file with suggestions, but i cannot currently figure out how to post it. I am working on it. I will keep you posted.

(Moraghjang 22:55, 24 February 2011 (UTC))

Thanks for the very thorough editing job! I appreciated all of the suggestions and it looks like your advice is going to be really helpful. I definitely needed a pair of outside eyes to show me what needs to be worked on the most. jnvincent 01:59, 25 February 2011 (UTC)