Friday, July 18, 2008

Thesis Proposal Presentation

Firstly. Yay, I'm done with it ;)
It was a 3-day marathon of presentation after presentation.
I presented yesterday (17/7). And my supervisor said it was okay~! A relief, (and a success, may I add? 2 friends said it was ok too and one even said, to quote, 'like so bergaya saja'. hehe :P) considering I have never met her!(supervisor I mean) Just came up with it based on the one-time meeting with the co-supervisor and continuous discussion with fellow thesis-mate.
FYI, before presentation day, I presented it roughly to my boyfriend, my cousin, my aunt and two speech students. To make sure that on actual presentation I tak syok sendiri, hehe. And they understood well! But admitted that it was a bit technical, of course.
So what is it that I proposed, u ask?
I'll try to explain it in laymen terms.
Basically, it is an advanced research of one of my seniors. As I've mentioned in an earlier blog, she did the same thing except her population is the schoolchildren. So her findings revealed puzzling results, where the benefits of bilateral are similar to left-unilateral fitting while the benefits of bilateral is higher than right-unilateral fitting.
As it is generally known, the right ear hears better because of how the brain works. It's called the right ear advantage. So from her findings, my senior hypothesized that when wearing the EduLink on the left ear, the benefit of EduLink (which has been proven where wearing it is better than not wearing it. To quote my bf, 'Duh, that's why it's created in the first place') combined with the right ear advantage leads to the similar benefit of bilateral fitting. The right-unilateral fitting on the other hand, with only the EduLink benefit and no left ear contribution resulted in the obvious better benefit of bilateral than unilateral fitting.
Am I making sense so far?
That very hypothesis justifies this research where I'll be conducting it on the elderly population. Studies have reported that the older people have decreased right ear advantage. So I need to find out if there is a right ear advantage effect that influences the EduLink fitting, besides determining the relationship between both variables.
I think that was a very straight-forward explanation.
With a good start on the proposal, I hope I will be on the right track all the way :)

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