Friday, October 30, 2009

My sad methodology chapter and a new outline

I was so anxious to have something to show for my week that I fired off my methodology chapter (chapter 3 in the current outline) to my adviser as soon as I could. I congratulated myself for doing that so early in the week, as it had been my goal to finish it by today.

And now as I read another gal's dissertation, I'm shaking my head and moaning in disgust. My methodology chapter was not at all complete. I had basically the first half, sure, but I completely forgot to include important things like how I actually went about measuring the vowels! Ugh. I know better. I've got to get my head out of the clouds and back into my dissertation.

On the bright side, it's been good for me to go through and read another dissertation. I wasn't sure if it would be worth the time (while this one is about imitation, it focuses on accomodation/convergence, which is not the direction I'm heading), but I think it is. If nothing else, I'd been needing to remind myself what a finished product would look like.

And it's making me rethink my outline. So here is a revised version, that will probably undergo further revision a month from now.
  1. Introduction - Background, pilot study, motivation
  2. Methodology - Normal stuff (including the analysis part I somehow managed to forget), hypotheses
  3. Results - Both the listener and speaker statistics, with plenty of charts and tables
  4. Discussion - Just what it says, polished off with a brilliant conclusion
Hm. Now that's looking too short, like I'm going to have to cram in so many subheadings that it'll be almost ridiculous. Oh well, I'll just work with this for now. Like I said, it's always subject to revision!

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