Analysis on the Common Problems of the Beginners of Academic Paper Writing

LIN Shi-ping

(Journal Editorial Department of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing 401120, China)



Analysis on the Common Problems of the Beginners of Academic Paper Writing

LIN Shi-ping

(Journal Editorial Department of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, Chongqing 401120, China)

The beginners of academic paper writing not only include the young undergraduates, graduate students, of course, but also include those teaching and management staffs who engaged in the teaching and management work for years. Technically speaking, these people are not full-time researchers, to take the law subject for example, only the researchers who work in the Chinese academy of social sciences and the local institutes of law are the full-time researchers, and the rest are the part-time researchers. But no matter the full-time or part-time researchers, they must write a certain number of academic papers, it is not just in order to meet the needs of the application for degree, assess the title, and is to improve the learning effect and the teaching and management level. Imagine this, if the teachers only repeat what the books say, and do not have a thorough understanding of the professional issues and views toward the subjects, they certainly cannot satisfactorily complete the teaching tasks. If a student only reads without thinking, then his absorption of knowledge stays in the primary form. Therefore, to improve the academic thesis writing level and ability is a task that everyone must face.

academic papers; writing; methods; specifications

In this paper, through a case study of the 69 procuratorial theory research papers received by the procuratorial organs of Guangdong Province in 2015, combing with years of experience in editing, we pointed out the problems that the beginners of academic papers writing may face and put forward some ways and means to enhance the writing skills.

1　Common mistakes of the beginners

1.1Thesimilarselectedtopic

Such as the paper “Malpractice Tort Crime Causal Relationship Research”, there are 123 similar articles in the CNKI space, and when you search results with the key word “Analysis of the Crime of Contractual Fraud”, there are more than 10000 articles. This kind of topic did not reflect the characteristics of the local procuratorial organs, and also cannot utilize the advantage of the local procuratorial study, therefore, when selecting the topic, the attention should be paid on innovation, practicality and scientificity, and a failure of the selected topics is just like a wrong blueprint, constructing according to the wrong blueprint, the results can be imagined.

1.2Thenarrowfieldofvision

The articles like “The current judicial status of the crime of dangerous driving” “On the Challenge System of Civil Litigation” should be possible for the subject to be further excavated, so that a more profound connotation and a more clear idea of the subject can be revealed. Just reveal the status quo, or just talk about the system itself, does not have the creativity, at the same time, the existence of these problems, has a profound social background and legal relativity, we should expand the depth of field of vision, and reveal the relation between the theory and the reality of the legal society in the selected topic. Drunken driving or speeding, for instance, the ethical condemnation is not strong, however, due to the high risk brought by vehicles and other transportation tools in the modern society, which do not exist in the traditional society, thus there is a process for the people to understand it, the car accident on the personal, property damage, and the law must involve. These problems are good topics which can be further studied.

1.3Thelanguageexpressionabilityneedstoimprove

“Derelict Police Shot the Young Teenager Dead”, “Improve the Public Interest Litigation System to Protect Green Mountains and Rivers”, etc, these articles have a certain gap to the form of the theoretical research articles, and to strengthen the training of the academic standardization is necessary. In terms of style, the academic research paper has its particular style, in the use of language, it is different from colloquial and literary language characteristics, it has the features of written language, and the features of distinct discipline, legal language is the language of law, which has its unique style, the theoretical research articles should not be written in the style of news reports or general practical writing.

1.4Thereferencerateofcertainarticlesistoohigh

Such as the title and abstract of the article “The hierarchy system of compulsory measures in the investigation of duty crime” are exactly the same with the same title article written by Lin Weizhong, Song Kai from Guangzhou Tianhe district procuratorate in “The Rule of Law and Society”, 2012, 28 (The text content also has a considerable part of the excessive reference), and it needs to be improved. At present, due to the development of digital communication and network technology, the academic information accessibility, some authors lack of thinking and originality, and they love to copy and paste the information from the network to the article, as a result, as we are accustomed to typing, and not used to the hand writing, after a long while, we may not know how to write some of the words. Some graduate students, wrote voluminous tens of thousands of words, but in fact are collage, and if he is asked to actually write a note, or a short news, he can’t write well, such people are not in the individual, therefore, to strengthen the basic training of writing, to master the ability of language expression and to obtain the ability to translate from spoken language to written language are the keys to write the article well.

1.5Lackofacademiccitation

Some articles are lack of academic citation and the itations are not standardized, and there is a certain gap with the national recommended standards. It will cause some obstacles in contributing to the academic journals, so to strengthen the standardization of the academic citation is necessary. The significance of the academic citation is to force the researchers to grasp the existing research results, to avoid the low level duplication of research, and to promote to certain upgrading and sublimation on the basis of existing research, of course, academic citation also can make the article more scientific, authentic and rigorous, thus, to strengthen the standardization of academic citation is one of the key factors of the academic papers writing.

2　The ways and means to improve the writing skill

2.1PracticeMore

Writing is a practical science, like swimming, cycling, and all it takes is more practice. To write more diligently, to take each section of text seriously, and to develop good writing habits, is the foundation and the premise to enhance the writing skill, and a lot of people are afraid of writing articles, due to the lack of practice for many years, if suddenly asked them to write an articles, they may feel very difficult, and the lack of practice could lead to the decrease of the basic written language proficiency, which needs a period of training to recover. The beginners can enhance their writing skill through writing blog and WeChat.

2.2Begoodatmemory

For philosophy and the humanities and Social Sciences, many expressions have a fixed pattern, on the one hand, we need to grasp the classic Chinese by applying the classic expression, and communication and recognition results could be obtained, on the other hand, we need to keep up with the recent politics, economy, culture, science and technology research results and trends and to meet the requirements of the newly development, so that we can write the words with the characteristics of the times and fresh vitality. And we need to remember the new things and language expression, for example, what we call the “four comprehensives”, what exactly are the “four comprehensives”? What is the connotation of the comprehensively rule of law? These are the basic dynamics to lead the development of the discipline, and we need to carefully grasp. Also, language is a living thing, and social network and real life created a lot of new words, new paradigm of expression, for example, physiognomy, electricity, big data, thinking of the Internet, line, creative space and Internet industry park, and these series of new words briefly summarizes all kinds of phenomena and things and their regularity in the real life, using the traditional language, and we cannot vividly expressed the above content, therefore, which needs us to constantly update our own corpus and enrich our expression patterns.

2.3Committedtoassociation

Writing science is also a creative science, and the vitality of writing is not about piling up the text, but the use of language, expression and dissemination of their creative ideas, views, opinions or experience. From the perspective of the long human history, the ability of association is everything, for example, the legend tells that Xuanyuan emperor discovered that a rotated round can be used for transport from the phenomenon that a rolling straw hat kept relatively stable on the ground, and he then invented the wheel, so Xuan refers to the car, the Yuan refers to the straight wood on both sides of the car. For the human history, the invention of the vehicle is no less than the discovery of fire. Today, the United States is known as “the country on the wheels of the car”, while the human are conquering the space, and the locate compass used in the spacecraft also uses the principle that the wheels can keep stable. While we are writing, we should see the essence through the phenomenon, through the relationship between various events, we find the hidden rules, for example, today’s anti-corruption measures have been the people’s praise, being an officer is more and more difficult, this is because since the reform and opening up, China’s economy grew rapidly, from a country extremely short for material into the country ranks the second of the total GDP in the world, people’s material and cultural life level has greatly improved, but the mechanism to share the benefit of reform and opening up is far from perfect, and various interest groups occupy a large amount of wealth, and the Gene coefficient is high, and it becomes an unstable factor of national stability and social development, and corruption has endanger the stable political power and the image of the party and the state, therefore, a strong anti-corruption, the punishment of corrupt officials become the main measure of the party and the state for the current and a long period in future, from this angle, we can analyze the intrinsic link between the anti corruption and social stability, and between the happiness of people and the justice of law, so it is easy to write with certain depth and ideological content of the article.

2.4Abandonthe“studenttone”

“Student tone” refers to repeatedly use a few fixed vocabularies in an article and lacking of creativity. This phenomenon not only exists among the undergraduate students, but also among the master and doctoral students. This reflects the simple thinking and poor expression. In fact, the language of our country is broad and profound, the same things or phenomena can be used in different ways of expressing, these different expressions are not just for simply enriching the language, as the matter of fact, different expression has different communication effect, meanwhile, through in-depth analysis of one object or phenomenon, we will find that a simple vocabulary may has rich connotation, for example, the word “si xiang”, including the connotation of “thinking, wanting, thoughts and ideals” and so on. Sometimes a word in Chinese can be very accurate and vivid, for example, the word “ding” we use when we mention the digital camera lens, and is very accurate, and it is “fixed”, namely “fixed focal length”, and also means “unchanged”, and also relevant to “decide, formulate and determine”, and “pou”, which means “anatomy”, and is relevant with “Cesarean section”, “fish gutting”. “Tu” we use when we mention the slaughter knife and “Tu” we use when we mention massacre are related. This is a manifestation of the Chinese language is extensive and profound, vivid, profound and accurate, beginners should spend more effort to learn and grasp it, so that they can constantly improve their Chinese expression and writing ability level.

The above opinions are pure individual and immature and the purpose is to inspire. Any impropriety is for your comment.

(责任编辑杨梅梅)

林士平(1963—)，副编审，博士研究生，研究方向：编辑出版。

10.13769/j.cnki.cn50-1011/d.2016.08.026

format:LIN Shi-ping.Analysis on the Common Problems of the Beginners of Academic Paper Writing[J].The World and Chongqing, 2016(8):119-122.

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1007-7111(2016)08-0119-04

学术论文初学者常见问题分析

林士平

(西南政法大学期刊编辑部，重庆401120)

撰写研究型学术论文的初学者，主要包括但不限于青年本科生、研究生，当然，也包括一些多年从事教学、管理工作的教学或管理人员。从严格意义上讲，这些人都不是专职研究人员，以法学学科为例子，只有中国社会科学院和各地社会科学院法学研究所的研究人员等属专职，其余为兼职。但不论专兼职，都需在撰写一定数量的学术论文，这不仅仅是为了满足申请学位、评定职称的需要，而且是提高学习效果和教学、管理水平的需要。试想，如果教师只知道照本宣科，对学科中的专业问题没有较为深入的理解和看法，这样肯定不能令人满意地完成教学任务。学生如果只会囫囵吞枣，对知识的吸收只是初级形态。因此，提高学术论文撰写的水平和能力，是每个人都必须面临的任务。

学术论文；撰写；方法；规范

【编辑与出版】