Evaluation guidelines

Each student will present assigned papers and lead discussions in one class. You are expected to:

1. Send a draft of the slides beforehand. (15%)

2. Give a presentation about the paper(s) in class. (80%)

3. Send the slides to me by noon before the class. (5%)

What the presentation should look like

The presentation should be 15 minutes (or 20 minutes if two people are presenting). You would not have time to mention every single detail of the paper, so focus on the most important points. This would typically involve:

• The research question of the paper. What is the question the authors are trying to answer in the paper? If there is, you should also describe the competing theories the paper is trying to argue against.

• Quick overview of the background (if necessary): Is the paper addressing a specific preceding finding?

• The experiment design: What are the methods they used? How does it address the research question?

• Key findings: How does the data support their hypothesis?

• Your thoughts about the paper: e.g., Which aspects are (not) convincing and why?

If there are more students than the papers on the reading list, you might be asked to collaborate with another student. Conversely, when there are fewer students than the papers, you might be asked to present papers in multiple classes. In the latter case, each of your presentations is graded but only the best one is reflected in your overall grade.

You should submit the slides by noon on the day of the presentation to me via Teams chat. Please then upload the slides to the Materials channel of the course Teams by the end of the same day. (You can make some edits if you want to.)

Tips for presentations:

• Don't fill the slides with words. Slides are not your manuscript, but are something that guide and supplement your oral presentation.

• Include as much visual aids as possible, such as key figures or diagrams. It is great to make your own diagrams to illustrate key points.

Draft slides

You have to submit the drafts of your slides so that I can provide some quick feedback about it. The aim is to make sure you are on the right track and to see if you need any help. You should submit your draft slides by the end of Friday before the class by Friday at 2pm.

I will be only giving some quick feedback for the drafts, but if you need more detailed feedback, you are welcomed to meet me to discuss the presentation either before or after you submit the draft. You could either visit me in the office hours (preferable) or schedule a meeting if needed. 

Note that the draft slides are graded leniently regarding the quality.

Collaborative presentations

When multiple people are assigned to one presentation, it is mostly up to you how you split the work. However, you should follow the guidelines below:

• Each of you should have checked and agreed on the content of the presentations (e.g., manuscripts, slides, etc) both before submitting the drafts and before the actual in-class presentations. For example, you should make sure every presenter is on the same page about the draft slides before submission. 

• Every presenter should take part in the in-class presentation. For example, you should not have one of you prepare all the slides and one of you do all the in-class presentations.

• The presentation can be up to 20 minutes rather than 15 minutes if there are multiple presenters.

• Submit a brief report about which part of the work was done by you, your collaborator, or together. e.g., "I prepared the slides and did the oral presentation for Experiment 1 ...". Please submit this before the end of the day of the presentation via Teams chat.

Rubric

1. Understandings of the paper (30pts)

• Accurately understanding and conveying the crux of the paper

  • The research question

  • Crucial aspects of the methods

  • Key findings

  • Other important points (e.g., important prior findings)

2. Effectiveness of the presentation (30pts)

• Overall logical flow

• The slides were effective

  • Effectively using figures, diagrams, etc

  • Using examples

  • Not too wordy

  • Not distracting

• Not having too much of unimportant details

3. Critical thinking about the paper (20pts)

• Ideas going beyond the original paper. e.g., relationship with other studies, thoughts about other types of sentences, etc.

4. Submission of the draft and the final slides (15+5pts)

Students who are not presenting a paper will read the paper anyway and submit a reading response. In each reading response, you will be asked about the content of the paper (e.g., What is the research question?) and to provide discussion questions. The aim of this assignment is to make sure each of you is ready for the in-class discussions, so it will be mostly graded for submission rather than the quality.

Discussion questions

For example, you can think about:

• How is the paper related to other studies?

• Is there any concern about the study? Is the method valid?

• Is there another way to test the hypothesis?

• Are there any unanswered questions?

• Is there any follow up study you can think of?

The question should not be too vague. e.g., "This paper seems to be conflicting with A & B (YYYY) in this specific results. How can we reconcile the two results?" "The authors did X in the experiment but then can't we explain the result by Y despite the authors conclusion?"

You should think how you would answer the question. e.g., "I think this paper has such and such problems, and therefore this part of the argument does not stand. What do you think about it?"

When you are proposing a follow up study, it is not enough to just propose a possible extension but you should write about what you would newly learn from it and/or why it is interesting to do. "What if we do the same experiment in another language?" is not really an interesting question, but "What if we do it in Language A, which has a feature B, because it can address this unanswered aspect of the original research" is a very interesting one.

You don't always need to put your idea in a form of a question as long as it can stimulate a discussion.

You should submit this via Teams by the end of the day before the class. (e.g., if the class is on 10.10.2023, the deadline is 23:59 of 9.10.2023)

As this is a seminar rather than a lecture, discussions are important components of the learning experience in this course. I highly value coming to the classroom and participating in discussions. You will be graded for active participation, such as asking questions, answering other students' questions, sharing your own ideas, etc. If you show up to every class but just sit silently all the time, you will not get any grade.

In order to encourage active participation of each student, I expect everybody to be respectful to what other students say in the class.

The aim of this is to encourage participation rather than to give fine-grained evaluation for who is better than whom, so I will be grading your participation fairly leniently. But as a standard, you can expect to get a full grade if you make one in-class commitment to the class (e.g., sharing your ideas) in each class on average. 

*This is only a tentative plan for the term paper. Please wait for more details.*

If you register for 7 credits, you are additionally assigned a term paper. Propose a research question related to language production. Then address the question by either (1) an experiment proposal or (2) a critical literature review.

Please submit a PDF file by 31.9.2024. (*Tentative deadline*)