A Study of Graduate Thesis Writing Course for English Undergraduates

Graduate thesis is an important form to assess students’ comprehensive ability. But the questionnaires carried among 36 supervisors and 167 students in the School of Foreign Languages of University of Jinan showed that a number of problems existed in the process and result of thesis writing.  The discrepancies in teachers’ and students’ beliefs and the problems in the graduate thesis writing course are the key causes of the low quality of students’ theses. The author of this paper reformed the graduate thesis writing course by doubling teaching hours and adding new contents, namely, the appreciation of academic papers published in journals of high prestige, the revision of former graduate theses, and the writing of academic papers. Results showed that students improved significantly in collecting and using materials as well as language and format.