Research On The Status Quo Of Thesis Writing Of English MED

Thesis writing is an essential segment in the postgraduate education of English majors.It can be taken as a test of postgraduates’ professional knowledge,foreign language skills and innovation ability.Besides,it is a partial fulfillment of the requirement for a master degree and also a significant benchmark for measuring the teaching quality and cultivation quality of a university.As a special group with a large number of students,the training objective of English MED is to cultivate highly-qualified primary and secondary school teachers equipped with sound modern educational theories and high-level teaching as well as research abilities.Its thesis focus should relate closely to the practical problems in the English teaching and educational administration area,which differs from other English majors in content and research method.However,there are few empirical studies about the status quo of thesis writing of English MED.Undertaken in the context of Central China Normal University,the present study explores the current situation of thesis writing of English MED with the purpose of exploring the major problems in students’ theses and tracing the factors leading to the problems in order to give corresponding suggestions to improve the quality of thesis.Text analysis is employed in this research to find out the major problems in students’theses.Besides,questionnaire and interview are adopted to trace the main factors leading to the problems with fifty-six English MED participating in the questionnaire and eight of them involving in the interview.The research findings show that the current situation of thesis writing of English MED is unsatisfying.Students have problems in the topic selection,language of the thesis as well as the writing of literature review,research discussion and bibliography part.In addition,the factors leading to the above problems are classified into external and internal ones.The external factors include the lack of uniform criterion and requirements,systematic guidance and supervision as well as authentic references and research conditions.As for the internal factors,it involves students’ poor mastery of English,insufficient devotion and negative attitude towards the thesis writing.Some possible suggestions on how to solve the above problems are also explored in the study.The university,the supervisor and students themselves are supposed to make efforts together to improve the quality of thesis.Firstly,a uniform writing criterion for thesis writing should be formulated and a rigorous management system should be established by the university in order to strengthen the process management of thesis writing.Secondly,the training plan and course arrangement of English MED should be optimized by the school of foreign languages.Thirdly,the supervisors should strengthen their guidance of students and offer more opportunities of academic communication for students.Lastly,students themselves should adjust their learning strategies in order to improve the quality of their thesis.