Graduate English Thesis and Practical Writing

Author: Lu Youxiao, Editor-in-Chief
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-03-01
Features: "Academic & Technical Writing for Graduate Students" was compiled to meet the needs of the reform of English courses for graduate students. The purpose of compilation is to effectively help graduate students improve their practical English writing skills through classroom teaching and extracurricular exercises. Language learners know that among the four language skills—listening, speaking, reading, and writing—writing is the most difficult and also the most revealing of language proficiency. This is true for native language writing as well as foreign language writing. The purpose of compiling this book is to help graduate students overcome the challenge of English writing.
This textbook has the following characteristics:
1. Practicality. As the title suggests, this textbook does not teach the writing techniques of general English genres (such as narrative, descriptive, expository, and argumentative essays), but focuses specifically on the writing skills of English academic papers and application letters. These skills are essential for every graduate student in their professional studies, academic pursuits, study abroad, or job hunting.
2. Targetedness. The intended readers of this book are Chinese students whose native language is not English. During the compilation process, we always prioritized the needs of the students. Each unit, while explaining the writing characteristics, content, and requirements of English academic papers or application letters, also provides many applicable English sentence patterns and expressions for students to refer to.
3. Innovation. Currently, in the domestic book market, there are many writing textbooks for common English genres, but textbooks specifically for English academic papers and application letters are not only scarce in number but also often lack depth, making them unsuitable for the practical needs of graduate students. Based on an analysis and comparison of writing textbooks from both domestic and international sources, we have taken the strengths of others and created something new, compiling this modern English writing textbook designed for graduate students. This will undoubtedly play a certain role in cultivating and improving graduate students' English writing communication skills.
Here, we would also like to emphasize one point: the cultivation and improvement of English writing skills are closely related to the development of other language skills, especially reading skills. Therefore, while students focus on training their writing skills, they should also pay attention to training other language skills.
This book was compiled by the Graduate Teaching Division of the College of Foreign Languages, Fudan University. Professor Lu Youxiao served as the editor-in-chief, with main contributors including Chen Qi, Fan Ruoen, Xia Wei, and He Jing. Professor Zeng Daoming served as the chief reviewer. The American language teacher, Grant Pemberton, reviewed the entire book, while Larry Delugose reviewed some chapters. In addition to participating in the writing, Fan Ruoen also did a significant amount of electronic input and layout work.