PSYCH 018 Index > Paraphrasing

Paraphrase Assignment

Read everything before doing anything!

The object of this assignment is to paraphrase a psychological study. The study is online at URL http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp.7.20.html.

Read the study, and then write a summary of the article that would be appropriate for a general audience. Write it as though it were going to appear in a beginning psychology book. The double-spaced document should be two to three pages, not including the title page. The title page must be in APA style. Instead of your name, please put your class identifier number. Use the following as your title and running head. Remember that the running head is in all capital letters, but the title is capitalized as shown here:

Gender and Perceived Status (Summary)

Since this is not a research paper, you may summarize previous research covered in the authors’ introduction without giving secondary source citations for that research. Your summary will have a reference section that includes a reference to the original article, in APA style, adjusting the date of retrieval to match the date you read the article.

Hopcroft, R. (2002, August 28). Is gender still a status characteristic?, Current Research in Social Psychology, 7(20). Retrieved from http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp.7.20.html

Remember, you are summarizing and paraphrasing. Plagiarism, of course, is the kiss of death, rewarding you with an instant zero on the assignment.

An Example

This is a different research paper that I paraphrased. In order to do this, I first took some notes on the article. Ordinarily I would take notes with pen and paper, but I needed to have something I could put on the web site. After I took the notes, I put the original aside and worked mainly from the notes, referring back to the original only if I needed additional detail. Here is the resulting paraphrase.

You will also want to read this handout about summarizing articles.

When You Finish

Name the file in the form paraphrasennnn.doc (if Microsoft Word format), or paraphrasennnn.odt (if OpenDocument text), where nnnn is your code number. Email it to the instructor, and print out a copy to give to the instructor in class. The filename must be all lowercase, and may not contain blanks.

Grading the Assignment

I will be using this rubric as a guide to grading your assignment.