Psyc2301 Book Report

100 Points

Purpose

This book report will assess both your skill in communication, as measured by your mastery of the written English language, and your ability to read and understand findings in psychology. As such, your grade will be based both on your technical writing and the content of your paper.

What to do:

Choose one book from the following list:

• Willpower,by Roy Baumeister
• Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert
• Blink,by Malcom Gladwell
• Whistling Vivaldi, by Claude Steele
• The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt
• The Better Angels of our Nature, by Steven Pinker
• Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning,by Peter C. Brown and Henry L. Roediger III
• Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman
• Predictably Irrational, by Dan Ariely
• The Invisible Gorilla, by Daniel Simons
• Blindspot, by MahzarinBanaji and Anthony Greenwald

After reading a book from the provided book list, you will write a 3 – 5 page book report. This report must address points 1, 2, and 3 below. In addition, your book report must also address points 4 and 5 (if you enjoyed the book) or points 6 and 7 (if you did not enjoy the book).

1. What was the central premise of the book?
2. Briefly summarize each chapter or section of the book. How does each chapter contribute to the overall theme of the book?
3. Choose at least one specific study from the book and explain, in your own words, the details of the study (hypothesis, method, and results) and how the study was relevant to the author’s point. Note that this section of your paper must describe a scientific study detailed in the book. A description of an anecdote or personal example does not count. For example, you could detail a study of the effects of an intervention to improve student’s grades, but you could not describe the author’s personal experience with trying to improve her own grades.

Did you enjoy the book? If so, address the following two points:

4. What is at least one lesson from the book that you feel you could apply in your own life?
5. What is at least one thing from the book that you believe everyone would benefit from learning?

If you did not enjoy the book, address the following two points:

6. What did you hope to learn from this book, and why did it fail to live up to your expectations?
7. If you could change one thing about the book, what would it be, and why?

How to do it:

• You will save your paper as a .docx (the standard file formats for Microsoft Word). If you choose to use a word processor other than Microsoft Word, be sure to save your file in .docx format.
• You will upload your paper to TurnItIn via Blackboard.
• If you encounter an error when you attempt to upload your paper to TurnItIn, you must email it to me as a .docx before the due date. If you email me your paper after the due date, email me before the due date but do not have your paper attached, or email before the due date with a paper in any format other than .docx, your paper will be counted late until I receive it in the proper format.

Plagiarism:

Your paper must be entirely the result of your own effort. You may not copy, in part or in whole, the work of anyone else. This includes, but is not limited to, fellow students, professional writers, bloggers, Wikipedia, or online paper mills. All papers will be evaluated by TurnItIn, a software tool that compares the content of student papers to thousands of sources and previously submitted student papers.

You may make multiple submissions prior to the due date. For each of your first three submissions, you will be given an immediately generated “similarity report” from Turnitin. This report will tell you what percentage of your paper, if any, matches external sources. If your similarity report shows a 10% or greater match, your paper will be considered plagiarized.

As such, you should build in time to make at least one submission prior to the due date to ensure that your paper is not flagged for plagiarism. If your paper returns a match of 10% or greater and you are unsure how to correct this, email me or see me in my office hours and I will be happy to help. If, however, your final submission is a 10% or greater match, you will receive a zero on the paper, and you may be exposed to appropriate disciplinary action from South Plains College.

Grading and Rubric:

Only your final submission will be graded. At a minimum, your paper must be a book report based on a book chosen from the list provided in your syllabus. If your paper is not based on a book from that list, you will receive a zero on the assignment.

Your paper will be graded based on three categories: technical, following directions, and content.

TEchnical: 25 points

The technical category reflects how well written your paper is from a technical writing standpoint. This category encompasses grammar, spelling, punctuation, clarity of writing, and concision of writing.

You will lose technical points if you commit errors in grammar, spelling, or punctuation; if your sentences are unduly repetitive or wordy; if you omit or misuse words; if your writing is awkwardly phrased or otherwise difficult to read; or if your general train of thought is difficulty to follow.

Examples of common errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation

Listed below are few examples of common errors in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. This is not an exhaustive list, but it does contain some of the errors I see most frequently in student papers. You will lose points each time you commit any such error in your paper.

Grammar Resources

You may find the following resources helpful when writing your paper:

Purdue OWL (Online Writing Lab)

OWL is a massive repository of writing tips. If it’s a rule pertaining to writing, you can probably find it on the OWL.

https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Quick and Dirty tips

Grammar Girl is a blog maintained by Mignon Fogarty, AKA Grammar Girl. It has a more casual style than the OWL and also contains less information, which can make it easier to navigate.

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/grammar-girl

The Elements of Style (AKA Strunk and White)

The Elements of Style, written by W. Strunk and E.B White, is considered the definitive grammar snob’s guide to good writing. It focuses more on style tips than hard and fast rules, but it is a great resource for things like comma usage and commonly confused words. You can grab a copy fairly inexpensively on Amazon, or just check out the PDF.

https://faculty.washington.edu/heagerty/Courses/b572/public/StrunkWhite.pdf

General writing quality

In addition to grammar, spelling, and punctuation, the technical grading category includes overall writing quality. The quality of writing is determined by the correct use of words and the ability to convey your ideas clearly and concisely. Clarity of writing means that it easy for your reader to understand what you are trying to say. Less clear writing will require the reader to reread passages or may leave the reader uncertain about your actual intent. Concise writing is writing that gets your point across without excessive or repetitive language.

Here is an example of a concise passage as opposed to a wordy passage:

Wordy

The Statue of Liberty is an immense, gargantuan, monstrous structure which dominates and subjugates New York Harbor. Its incontestable majesty conclusively serves as an inescapable, ineffable symbol of freedom and liberty than none can fail to grasp.

Concise

The Statue of Liberty, an immense structure that dominates New York Harbor, is a symbol of freedom.

Notice that the two passages convey identical meaning (the Statue of Liberty is big, it’s the main feature of New York Harbor, and it represents the ideal of freedom), but the first takes two sentences and 37 words to say what the latter does in one sentence and 17 words. When in doubt, shorter is better.

Go with what you know

When writing a paper for class, it can be tempting to use big, fancy sounding words. When say “bad” when you could say “monstrous”, “clear” when you could say “incontrovertible”, or “big” when you could say “gargantuan”? I’ll tell you why – because sometimes the simpler word makes for better writing. The fancier you get with your language, the more you risk errors. In academic writing, it is best to stick to what you know. Only opt for more complicated words if you know the precise meaning of that word, and if that meaning is a better fit for what you are trying to say than a simpler word would be. As a general rule of thumb, follow the KISS principle in your academic writing: keep it short and simple.

Following directions: 25 points

The following rubric will be used to grade your paper for following directions. The maximum possible deduction for failing to follow directions is 25 points, regardless of the number of infractions.

Paper Quality: 50 points

Your paper will be assessed based on the overall quality of your writing, as well as the overall quality of description and analysis of the book. The following rubric will be used to assess paper quality:

The synopsis of the book’s main ideas is accurate and complete

For your synopsis to be considered accurate and complete, you must provide a summary of all of the books main themes and ideas. An easy way to do this is to summarize each chapter, section, or part of the book (depending on how the book is organized; I’m going to use the term “chapter” for simplicity going forward, but you get my meaning). Summaries need not be exhaustive, but your reader (me) should have a good sense of each chapter’s main point by the end.

As a general guide, an “A” synopsis will accurately summarize each chapter of the book and accurately explain the overarching theme or idea that ties all of these chapters together. A “C” synopsis will accurately summarize the main point of the book, but will provide little to no detail about the ideas conveyed in individual chapters. An “F” synopsis will accurately summarize neither the main idea nor the book’s individual chapters. Other combinations (e.g. great overall summary and mediocre chapter summaries, good summary of one or two chapters but nothing else) would fall somewhere in between.

Descriptions of specific studies or examples are accurate

You are required to describe at least one specific study from the book in detail. Your description should describe the research’s hypothesis, how that hypothesis was tested, what they found, and how that relates to the book’s main idea. For example, imagine you read a book whose main idea was that brainstorming was a worse way to make decisions than allowing individual to think about things on their own. Suppose you wanted to describe the Asch experiment. A good description might go something like this:

Solomon Asch believed that most people would be willing to go along with the group even when the group was obviously wrong. To test this hypothesis, he recruited college students to participate in what they believed was a test of visual perception. Working in groups of five, subjects were asked to look at a set of lines and say which two lines were the same length. One at a time, each subject would say aloud which line they thought was the same length as the target line. It was always fairly obvious which line on card two matched the target line. In reality, only one of the five people was actually a subject; the other four were confederates who were working with the experimenter. The actual subject always answered last, and the four confederates had been told that, after about two trials, they should start giving the wrong answer. So if the correct answer was 1, for example, the confederates might each say 2. Asch found that, about a third of time, subjects went along with what the confederates had said, even when that answer was obviously wrong. This shows that people are sometimes care more about what other people think than they do about being right. This is one reason brainstorming could be a bad idea. A group of people might all be willing to give the wrong answer rather than go against the group, whereas people making decisions alone wouldn’t feel pressured to conform.

The student explained whether they enjoyed the book, and cited either something they can apply in their own life and something everyone should know, or explained what they hoped to learn from the book and what they would change about it if they could

First, I want to make it clear that your grade will not be affected by whether you liked the book or not. I hope that you do enjoy the book you choose and that you learn something from it, but you may not.

criteria if you enjoyed the book

If you enjoyed the book, you must describe one thing you learned that you will apply in your own life, and one thing that you think everyone should know from the book. A low quality response here will simply name a lesson without explaining why it stuck with you or how you will apply it in your life. For example, this would be a poor quality response:

After reading this book I think I will try harder to get to sleep on time because that is important.

If I were grading this response, I would be left with several questions. Why will you try get to sleep on time? How, specifically, will this improve your life? How do you plan to go about implementing this intended change? Here is a better response:

While reading his book, something that really stuck with me was how important

Submitting your paper

Papers must be submitted to Turnitin via Blackboard prior to the posted due date and time. After submitting your paper, you will see a confirmation screen and be sent a confirmation email. You should take a screenshot of the confirmation screen and ensure that you receive the confirmation email. If for any reason I do not receive your submission, these will be the proof that you did, in fact, submit your paper on time. Without one or both of these forms of verification, your paper will be counted as late.

If you are unable to upload your paper to Turnitin (e.g. Blackboard or Turnitin are down) you may email your paper to me at wcrescioni@southplainscollege.edu. Your email must contain your attached paper saved in .docx, your full name as it appears on Blackboard, and the course number and section for which you are submitting the paper. If you are missing any of that information, if your paper is not attached, or if the paper is not attached in the indicated format, your submission will not count. If I have to ask you to resubmit your paper because it was not in .docx format, your paper will be graded based on the date I received it in the correct format.

Late Papers:

Late papers will be deducted 25 points each day. Papers that are more than three days late will not be accepted.

Direct Quotations:

Direct quotations are not allowed in this paper. This means that all writing should be in your own words; you should never be using the exact words of the author of the book. For example, suppose you were writing a book report on this very document, and you wanted to explain what would happen if you turned your paper in late. I’m going to pretend I’m you now. Here’s “your” paper:

Late papers are accepted, but “Late papers will be deducted 25 points each day. Papers that are more than five days late will not be accepted.”

That’s a direct quotation; you just took my words and copied them. That’s not unethical, as long as you cite where it came from, and in many papers in college you’ll likely be able to do just that. However, in this paper I want you writing entirely in your own voice. So you might do something like this:

You can turn the book report in late, but you lose points if you do so. It’s five points for the first day, and another five each day after that. After four days, you’ve already lost all 25 points, so you can’t turn the paper in anymore at that point.

Notice how the meaning is the same, but I put it my own words. You don’t need any external sources for this paper; everything you need is in the book you are reading. If you use direct quotes, you’re merely letting the author do the explaining; I want you to explain the book to me in your words.

Suggested approach to writing your paper

Most books on this list are about 300 pages long. Based on the average reading speed of a US adult, you should expect it to take you about 10 hours to read the entire book. Obviously this is just an estimate, but it’s a decent starting point. If you know you tend to be a slow reader, you’ll want to adjust that estimate upward by a few hours. I strongly advise that you select and purchase your book sooner rather than later. If you started at the beginning of the semester and read just five pages a day, you’d be done in two months. The longer you wait, the more time you will have to spend reading each day. You should also keep in mind that for most students the beginning of the semester is their least busy time, so it’s only going to get harder to find time to read the longer you wait.

Rather than waiting until you are done with the book to start writing, I encourage you to write a brief summary of each chapter as soon as you are done reading it. Don’t worry just yet about making it sound good or even about grammar and spelling – just focus on getting your ideas about the chapter recorded. If you spend just 15 minutes summarizing each chapter after you read it, then when you are done you will already have something of a rough draft. All you’ll need to do is polish up those summaries, add a general synopsis at the beginning, stick in a study summary where appropriate, and add your thoughts at the end. Then just proofread and you’re done.

Another approach, and the one my advisor taught me in grad school, is to break your writing into three stages. First, write a rough draft that is all about getting ideas on the page. Don’t worry about formatting, grammar, flow, or anything else. Just write. Then take a break. The next day, go over that draft and edit for style. Organize it into paragraphs, add an intro and conclusion, add transition sentences, and so on. You are not allowed to edit the content in this step; you’re just making it look pretty. Then take a break. On the third and final day, proofread. Just go through looking for technical errors. You’re not allowed to change content or work on style; you’re just fixing technical errors. Do this at least twice. Then, you’re done.

Questions?

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this assignment, contact Dr. Crescioni at wcrescioni@southplainscollege.edu.