Please follow these instructions:
Topic:
Content
1. Your paper must include three sections (use headings to identify each section): Summary, Evaluation, and Reaction. Below is an explanation of what is expected in each section. 1. Summary (1 to 2 pages): In this section, you are to provide a synopsis of the talk. You should not include every little detail. Instead, you should present the key information. Elements that should be included in your summary are: 1) Who is the speaker? What is their background or perspective relevant to the topic (e.g. are they a psychologist? A medical doctor? A journalist?), 2) what was the topic and what was the main thesis statement? (i.e., what is the main point/idea they want you to take away from their talk), 3) what were the speakers primary supporting evidence? (e.g. did they present any research findings? Statistics relevant to the topic?). Overall, you should demonstrate that you properly understood the talk (especially the main idea and the supporting evidence) and demonstrate that you can identify the key information from the superfluous information.
2. Evaluation: In this section, you are to i You should not discuss the presentation style of the speaker (e.g., you should not include any statements on the speaker being boring etc.), but instead you should focus solely on the content. For example, you could explore issues like was it a well-researched talk with reputable sources? Does the presented evidence actually support the thesis of the talk? Did the speaker leave out any relevant information? Did the speaker present a balanced view or was it one-sided? Did the speaker overgeneralise the supporting evidence? Does the literature support the points they are making? You do not have to limit yourself to these questions, but these questions give you a good starting point and a good idea of the type of evaluation you should be doing. To properly evaluate the strengths/weaknesses of the talk, you should not rely solely on your personal opinion. Instead you should use at least two empirical papers to support your evaluation. When evaluating a talk (or a paper), it is a good practice to try to come up with both strengths and weaknesses, and not focus purely on just strengths or just weaknesses. You should wrap up this section with presenting a potential future study direction related to the main idea. What kind of research should be conducted next to explore the main idea?
3. Reaction (2 to 3 pages): In this section, you should present your personal reaction to the talk and explore the practical implications of the information presented. You should not simply state if you liked the talk or not. Instead, you should be providing reasons for your impressions of the talk. You can explore issues such as: Do you agree with the main idea? Do you think it will impact you or change how you do anything in your personal day to day life? Do you think it will/should impact other people? How does it affect the field of psychology? Was there anything particularly surprising that you learned from the talk? When addressing these questions, remember to explain why you had that reaction. A well-balanced reaction section should address your reaction on how the talk impacts you (or you could argue how it does not impact you) and how it impacts other people. Note, in this section, it is perfectly acceptable to use first person statements.
