Research Sythesizing Essay
When I entered the Honors Program, the research competency was the most intimidating because I had not been introduced to undergraduate research. In my Introduction to Honors course, I paid close attention to the research competency unit, and I took great care to write a quality essay about what I had learned about research. After the unit, I contacted Dr. H. Sheen Chiou from the Communication Disorders Program, we scheduled an interview, and she placed me as part of her research team. During this time, I learned about the importance of ethical research and how to conduct and use ethical research in order to increase knowledge and information on a subject. I learned that research is as much as a creative process as a scientific process, and I connected how important it was for undergraduate study, graduate study, and my future career.
During fall semester 2016, I started conducting original research with Dr. H. Sheen Chiou in aphasia. We read multiple research articles, discussed research questions, and wrote a literature review. At the same time, I wrote a research paper on the implications of early childhood traumatic brain injury on the parameters of language and I conducted a case study on cross-cultural parentese. Although I was utilizing and conducting research, I was able to compare and contrast the purpose of each research venture and the process of each project. In my aphasia research, I was conducting original research on my team, and I was working to enlighten people on a specific topic. In my case study for Honors Seminar: Language and Culture, I was conducting original research and collecting data in an area that connected to global citizenship, language, and child language development that I had learned in my major. In my research paper on childhood traumatic brain injury, I was compiling recent, ethical research into my own paper in order to have a complete look at why and how traumatic brain injury affects language development.
All of these experiences gave me information that I could use in school and as a professional speech-language pathologist, and I learned the process of working from a broad to a narrow topic in order to develop a research question and a course of action. I will take the steps to present my research at the Minnesota Speech-Language Hearing Association Conference in April and the Undergraduate Research Symposium in April. After learning about research through the Honors Program, my classes, and conducting research, I see the importance of research in order to increase knowledge that aims to improve the lives of others.