User talk:Betsygorman/sandbox

Peer Review (Chelsea Carter)

I like how you made the organization of your lead section a lot more understandable. In the original article, the lead was not very understandable because of the organization. However, I believe that your “Introduction” section should stay in the place where the lead section was, instead of making it a whole new section. I also believe that you should make sure it is a summary of the rest of the article (I think you plan on doing this because you mentioned it at the end). So, you could start with defining bilingualism, then mention the effects, like executive function, vocabulary, literacy, age-related benefits, etc.

I think the history section is very thorough, and does not look like it had many problems in the original article. I also think it is a good idea that you are adding more information about the prevalence of bilingualism.

I believe that the first sentence in the "Executive Functions" section could be re-written. Also, the general organization of this section should be addressed. It sounds like it is just listing facts and research studies, which would be a little more appropriate if there were sub-headings. As a suggestion, you could introduce executive function and the research, then go through what has been found about bilingual’s executive function.

The Metalinguistic sub-section is very thorough. I think you have a good idea of what to add and change. One suggestion I have is to introduce the research again and also re-write the second sentence which includes the example.

Overall, I would suggest working on introductions to sections to briefly summarize that section or add more sub-headings to help with clarity within the sections. Although the information in this article is very thorough, sometimes I think it is too wordy and could be shortened to also help with clarity. Lastly, I suggest looking for more researchers and adding more sources because it may appear that the coverage is not balanced if it is mostly Bialystok's work.

Jalynn (Peer Review)

Not to be repetitive, but I agree with Chelsea, the lead is a lot more 1. well written 2. flushed out 3. introduces the topic well and sets up the rest of the article. This is necessary for the flow of the rest of the article. So as to not be repetitive, I'll focus more on the latter part of the draft, starting with the "Age-related benefits". This section is a lot written a lot clearer than the original. It also jumps straight into the topic which helps with clarity and cohesion of the article. It also makes its point through a lens of research and doesn't make claims unsupported by the literature. This is refreshing as the original article lost credibility in claim-making without proper supporting research examples. I think it was also necessary to remove the subsection "age of L2 acquisition" just to clean up the section a bit. That being said, bolding/italicizing/sub-headings are all very useful visual tools to the novice learner that could help in understanding the article. Because your article is rather long, and the topic is not widely known to the mainstream public, using those visual tools will certainly help sort out some of the wordi-er/dense-r parts. In the section, "Effects on Language", again, i like that all your claims are rooted in sound research. I also like that you took the liberty to add the section. But also, the source coverage could be more varied. Meaning who else is doing research on cognitive advantageous of bilingualism in addition to Bialystok? Who are her contemporaries? Still, the section is strong and does well to summarize her work without slipping into unsupported claim-making and redundancy. General tip is to re-read article aloud so you can hear the awk phrases and spelling errors. I know it's a long article to read aloud, but this'll help in the long run and will really make the article sharp. Great start team! Jalynn Jalynnh (talk) 12:54, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Emily P (Peer Review)

Overall, this article was very thorough. I liked the introduction section that provided a good, educated definition of bilingualism and the concept of cognitive advantages. Every section is very detailed with some sections being multiple paragraphs. In my opinion, it might be too much information for a layman reader to digest. For example, if I went to a Wikipedia page about something I know nothing about like automobile alternators and I saw sections with more than five paragraphs, I would probably stop reading because it's slightly intimidating.

The history section looks great and provides a great coverage of controversy surrounding this topic.

Other than possible breaking up of the longer sections, the main problems I saw were slightly awkward phrasings and misspellings (i.e. 'spelt' in "Parallel Activation of Both Languages") that could be mediated by proofreading again. Overall, I feel like you have already identified what should be worked on i.e. "Who is Leopold?" citation or "mention a summary of all subsections". Other than what my partners and myself have already said, I think this article has a great start and provides great information about the Cognitive Advantages of Bilingualism. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Emilypetersen (talk • contribs) 16:21, 28 February 2017 (UTC)