A Strategy for Improving Literature Reviews in Psychology Courses

Abstract

A teaching intervention to help undergraduates learn to write literature review papers is described.As a means of teaching undergraduates in an abnormal --psychology class to write scholarly literature review papers, I developed a series of presentations and exercises to address typical student difficulties in completing such an assignment. First, I prepared several minilectures to clarify the nature of the assignment, which was to write a review of the scholarly literature on a topic relevant to the course (using a minimum of 10 data-based articles ~ublished within the Dreceding 10 years). I devoted portions of several class periods to discussing the following issues: What a scholarly literature review is. how to distinguish between scholarlv sources and u popular press periodicals, the nature of the library search process, how to use abstracting services, appropriate use of quoted material, how to reference studies in APA style, what constitutes ~lagiarism, and how to write an abstract for . a journal article. In preparing my discussion of these topics, I relied o n material presented in Rosnow and Rosnow ( 1986); Maimon, Belcher, Hearn, Nodine, and O'Connor (198 1); and the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (3rd ed.; APA, 1983).T o teach students to formulate a topic, summarize articles, and integrate findings from several sources, I designed a series of overlapping writing assignments intended to shape the major skills needed in writing a literature review. I did not grade any of the writing assignments leading up to the final paper. Instead, students were able to get "free" feedback (i.e., with no effect on their course grades) simply by turning in assignments as requested. Although completion of the assignments was optional, nearly all students turned in each assignment. > The sequence of writing assignments was as follows.1. Focused freewriting. Because Maimon et al. (1981) and Schor and Summerfield (1986) recommended focused freewriting as a way to begin writing, I asked students to write one paragraph on each of three topics they might be interested in researching for the paper assignment. Each paragraph was to include a description of the topic, why the student was interested in that topic, and how the student expected to benefit from researching that t o~i c . 2. Summarization of an essay. A t the beginning of a class period, students wrote summaries of a short essay (fewer than 1.000 words) I had ~h o t o c o~i e d from a read-;rigs book. he article I selected was a'n argumentative essay on a nontechnical-topic unrelated to abnormal psychology. After discussing the qualities of good and bad summaries and providing examples of both (cf. Maimon et al., 1981, pp. 102-107), I asked students to write a one-paragraph summary of the key points of the essay. I then gave them a summary I had written of the same essay and offered students suggestions for evaluating the quality of their own summaries. In particular, 1 asked them to note whether they had idendied the main points as w...

Implementing and Evaluating a Writing Course for Psychology Majors

“…First, following the recommendations of Boice (1990), Dunn (1994), and Poe (1990), I had students engage in a freewriting exercise in class to brainstorm possible topics for their reviews. Students then collaborated with their peers and me to narrow their topic to one that would likely yield a viable paper.…”

Teaching Scientific Writing: Measuring Student Learning in an Intensive APA Skills Course

“…Discipline-specific writing classes vary in design, from the introduction of writing exercises within existing classes (Fallahi, Wood, Austad, & Fallahi, 2006;Nadelman, 1990;Poe, 1990;Ware, Badura, & Davis, 2002) to courses devoted solely to scientific writing (Goddard, 2003;Pfeifer & Ferree, 2006;Rileigh, 1998), but a common objective is to enhance student familiarity with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (American Psychological Association [APA], 2010). Students are required to use the APA manual in classes because it provides the most widely used template for scientific thinking and writing in the behavioral and social sciences and is, therefore, integral to students' professional socialization (Ballard, Klein, & Dean, 2007;Gianaros, 2006;Madigan, Johnson, & Linton, 1995).…”

Do Literature Review Skills Transfer from One Course to Another?

“…Faculty are often frustrated with students' poor writing (Fallahi et al, 2006;Goddard, 2003;Granello, 2001;Poe, 1990), yet paradoxically we do not teach students the very writing skills we want them to have. A Writing for Research in Psychology course was developed to help students develop in the discipline generally and write literature reviews specifically.…”

“…Even less work has examined how writing instruction carries over to other courses. Poe (1990) suggests that the writing skills students acquire will transfer to other courses, but this is an empirical question: Do literature review skills transfer from one course to another? We hoped that the skills taught in our PSYC 205 would at least hold, if not improve, in a subsequent course.…”