LING 7800-005: LSA Summer Institute 2011
Homework 4 – Research Paper Critique

Pick two of the papers from the readings of one lecture topic and write a 2-3 page summary of the two works, discussing similarities and differences in the approaches and/or findings in the context of the specific tasks that they tackle. The differences could be due to genre, assumptions about annotated data, linguistic analysis, advances associated with a time difference of the articles, etc. At least one of the two papers should be from the list of optional readings.

The following provides examples (but not a requirement) of discussions you might include:

• Why the general problem that both papers address is important and what types of applications it has implications for (you can pull from the papers for this and/or bring in your own points),
• A couple paragraphs summarizing the main contributions of each paper,
• Important similarities and/or differences in methods or findings,
• Implication of similarities in terms of generality of the findings and/or of differences in terms of the limitations of a particular approach or study.

The style of your discussions should be similar to a paper review: highlight useful results, but do not be afraid to point out limitations of the methods. If you are ambitious or know something about work in the area of either paper you have chosen, then you can expand on any of these points and discuss findings in related work that confirm the results or point out limitations.