| In recent years, Chinese postgraduates’ education has witnessed a big expansion in its enrollment and the corresponding cultivation programs have also becoming diversified. However, under the background of this big expansion, the quality of Chinese postgraduates is being questioned by the public. How to coordinate the big enrollment and the quality of Chinese postgraduates has become an important issue waiting to be solved in the current Chinese postgraduates’ education.Master thesis can be taken as an important yardstick to the educational and academic level of postgraduate education of a university and it is also the basic requirement for obtaining a master degree. Literature review, as an essential component of a master thesis, lays a firm foundation for the theory development in a thesis. The quality of literature review not only relates to the research ability of researchers but also connects with researchers’perception of aims and functions of literature review. It is found that most of the previous studies concerning master thesis mainly center on other parts of the thesis, namely, introduction part, discussion part, with a particular focus on introduction part. However, scarce attention was paid to study literature review. And among the very few studies, most of them are investigated from theoretical perspective rather than being studied empirically. The contents of studies on literature review mainly focus on genetic features of literature review between different disciplines and contrastive analysis of literature review in English and Chinese research articles. And with regard to research scope, studies have mainly concentrated on bachelor thesis and PhD. dissertations. In view of this, this empirical investigation of Chinese postgraduates’ perception of literature review in master thesis may, to some extent, further contribute to the study of literature review. The participants in this study are 120 postgraduates randomly chosen from Central China Normal University and the research questions are as follows:(1) What’s the status quo of the perception of literature review in master thesis among Chinese postgraduates? Are there any perception differences on literature review between arts graduates and science graduates?(2) What major problems do Chinese postgraduates encounter when writing a thesis literature review?(3) What can be done to improve Chinese postgraduates’ ability to write thesis literature review?It is found that most of Chinese postgraduates have a high level perception of literature review at macro level. As for the perception of literature review at micro level, both.arts and science graduates display a high level perception of the aims and functions of literature review and a comparatively lower level perception of the criteria and norms of literature review. The perception differences do exist between arts and science graduates. And arts graduates tend to have a higher level perception than science graduates in the following aspects:aims and functions of literature review, writing principles of literature review, criteria and norms of literature review, contents of literature review. It is also found that there exist problems in thesis literature review among postgraduates mainly focus on three aspects, namely literature search, literature synthesis and review writing. Based on the results of the questionnaire and interview, three measures are put forward to improve the current situation from the perspective of students’ attitude, curriculum design and teachers’ guidance respectively.This study reveals Chinese postgraduates’ overall perception of literature review in master thesis. And the research findings provide some implications for the faculty authority to revise the current curriculum design and for the teachers to strengthen their guidance. Besides, it also has practical significance in helping improve postgraduates’ ability to write a qualified literature review, which will improve the quality of master thesis as well. |
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