1. Problems in the topic selection (design)

At present, the main manifestations are that the topics are not clear, and it is not clear what to study and discuss. Some topics lack academic, innovative, practical and feasible, and the scope and depth are inappropriate. First of all, it is not accurate to grasp the topic. Take the graduation thesis of English major in 20 10 Foreign Languages Department as an example, some students choose the principles and methods of brand translation. Trademark translation is the theme of this paper. Although the article is written from the perspective of cultural contrast between China and the West, it has some connection with English majors, but this connection is not enough to achieve the close degree between the selected topic and English majors required for graduation thesis. Secondly, the starting point of some topics is too big to write a book or doctoral thesis such as Analysis of the Essence of European Culture. Different from the characteristics of 20th century literature, the 20th century's world cultural characteristics are too large and wide, lacking the necessary argumentation support. As a result, the topic is diluted, and the topic is big and empty, and I am afraid that such a topic needs a monograph to clarify the length of the undergraduate graduation thesis, which is far from enough. Thirdly, some topics are too simple and outdated. The symbolic meaning of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter, the symbolic meaning of Daughter Pearl, the study of Jane Eyre's modern female image, the personality characteristics of contemporary women in Jane Eyre, and the analysis of Scarlett's personality in Gone with the Wind obviously lacks originality in topic selection, such as the analysis of He Sijia in the Wind. Although the purpose, method and result of the research are written, the key of this research is not grasped, so it does not provide high information value. Finally, the topic selection of graduation thesis for English majors should meet the training objectives and teaching requirements of English majors. For example, the origin and development of the American Constitution, the emergence and development of the American Constitution and the differences in wording between men and women in business negotiations, and the language differences between men and women in business negotiations are not so much graduation papers of English majors as graduation papers of the Department of Political Science and Law and the Department of Economics and Management. This kind of topic selection can neither reflect the professional training goal, nor have the realistic and objective conditions to complete it, which is beyond the ability of an undergraduate and the knowledge of his major, and ultimately leads to the failure to complete the task well.

2. Problems in the beginning of the thesis

The topic selection of graduation thesis is related to whether the graduation thesis can achieve the writing purpose, and it is the key link to ensure the quality of graduation thesis. Successful topic selection means that the paper is half finished. However, due to the randomness of topic selection, college students did not devote themselves to the research in one direction from beginning to end, which led to frequent changes in topic selection, not to mention the improvement of paper quality, and also affected the overall quality of the paper.

3. Problems in writing

1, another obvious problem of English major graduation thesis is that students' writing ability is generally poor and their basic skills are not solid.

The author randomly selected 30 graduation papers for English majors, and found many grammar and spelling mistakes in almost every paper. For many years, English writing has been the weakest link in English teaching. Although we have taken some measures in teaching and examination, the results have been little, and students' writing ability has not been improved as it should be.

It is still far from the requirements stipulated in the outline. How to improve English writing teaching has become a very prominent hot issue.

The author thinks that a small writing lecture can be given to students every semester from freshman year, and a more formal paper can be completed, so that students can increase their academic writing experience, experience habits and accumulate materials. This is of great benefit to the writing of graduation thesis, and it is beneficial to make students feel comfortable in small groups when conditions permit. When participating in teachers' scientific research projects, we can do some auxiliary work as much as possible to let students know some basic scientific research methods, and more importantly, we can learn from teachers.

This paper lacks innovative spirit.

When writing a thesis, many students' opinions are trite, which means that some topics in literature are like inner monologues in Hamlet. The practical significance in Dickens' works, the awakening of women's consciousness in Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice, and the analysis of personality characteristics in Robinson Crusoe are all written repeatedly for several sessions or the same session, and even the topics of the same session are the same.

3. Plagiarism has been repeatedly banned.

At present, the proportion of papers written by students themselves is decreasing year by year. The writing process of a thesis is often a process in which graduates search for articles with similar contents on the Internet and then copy and paste them to spell out a so-called graduation thesis. Plagiarism is repeatedly prohibited not only because the writing time of graduation thesis is unreasonable. According to the teaching plan, the writing time of graduation thesis is generally arranged in the eighth semester. This semester, students spend most of their time choosing jobs, applying for jobs and interviewing. Postgraduate entrance examination, re-examination and graduation thesis work have all been impacted to varying degrees. Students are seriously short of time and energy, and some even have no intention to do graduation thesis, which leads to repeated plagiarism. They mistakenly think that their graduation thesis can only read a few books, copy things from the east and copy things from the west, or download and paste materials online, and some even copy other people's achievements online or yearn for graduates to buy papers.

4. Information search means lack of single data.

Graduation thesis writing, as a special scientific research activity, needs to draw nutrition from rich literature and lay a solid foundation for research. Without the possession and utilization of relevant scientific research materials, the research of the subject is impossible, and the collection of relevant literature materials of the selected subject is not sufficient. There are three main reasons why the article is empty because of its lack of direction and persuasiveness: first, the consciousness of actively obtaining and using information is not strong; second, the knowledge of literature information is not comprehensive enough, and people are not familiar with modern retrieval tools such as Internet professional databases. Thirdly, the operational ability and practical application ability of literature retrieval are not strong, and new information resources cannot be effectively utilized. Due to the lack of academic and rigorous use of documents, including the collection, selection, quotation and labeling of documents, the phenomenon of incomplete information and completeness in graduation thesis is generally serious.

Second, how to deal with the common problems in English major graduation thesis writing

1. Topic selection and opening

The topic selection of graduation thesis is not only the beginning of thesis writing, but also the key to writing a good thesis. The process of topic selection is not only an activity of understanding and thinking, but also a process of constant comparison and selection. Under the guidance or suggestion of teachers, the topic of graduation thesis should be novel and have academic value, and research and solve problems that have not been studied and solved by predecessors. It is necessary to recognize the background of the topic, understand the work of predecessors or other people related to the topic, and point out what shortcomings or gaps exist, so as to determine new topics and research directions.

2. Summary

Many students can't write an abstract, which can't reflect the main content of the paper, but some papers write a summary. According to the national standards, the rules for writing abstracts clearly stipulate that abstracts should be written in the third person or omit the theme, and objectively describe the central content of the paper, such as research and investigation. It is also stipulated that there should be no notes and annotations, no examples and quotations, and no charts, formulas and chemical structures in the abstract. The graduation thesis writing reflects that students can't understand and master the independence of the abstract, that is, it objectively reflects the content of the original text and emphasizes the new content and new ideas of the original text rather than the supplementary comments and summaries of the text.

3. Writing process

Based on many years' practice and experience in guiding graduation thesis, the author thinks that when writing a thesis, the viewpoints in other people's literature are often cited as the object of questioning, arguing or refuting in the thesis, with the aim of emphasizing that this thesis will point out or prove the fallacies of previous viewpoints, research methods and conclusions with new and more sufficient arguments and more careful and reasonable argumentation process.

Step 4 refer to

If students want to write their graduation thesis well, they must possess the literature as widely as possible. Scientific research is an innovative graduation thesis writing on the basis of predecessors' achievements, and it is also inseparable from a large number of corresponding academic documents as a reference. To some extent, the quality of references represents the level of the paper. According to the investigation on the utilization of references for English majors, the quantity and quality are not ideal, and the number of graduation papers with more than 100 references is insufficient. The number of references listed in most papers is about 100, and many students' papers only have books and no periodicals. Many students don't know that the description format of the national unified reference description rules is generally wrong. In addition, there are many students who don't distinguish between notes and references. Most students regard annotations as references, and the same reference appears, but it is regarded as multiple references because of repeated references.

Third, some suggestions on improving the quality of graduation thesis for English majors

1. Strengthen the work of topic selection and topic opening.

Guide students to choose topics related to professional study. Choosing topics by major not only meets the basic requirements of colleges and universities for graduation thesis of English majors, but also facilitates students to develop their professional expertise by using professional knowledge and skills.

2. Deepen students' language skills and improve their English writing ability.

In recent years, the basic education of English majors in colleges and universities mostly emphasizes oral communication ability, ignoring the cultivation of writing ability to some extent, which leads to the decline of students' writing level. Due to the lack of writing practice and experience, China students often stay at the level of words and sentences, and are not good at using details to expand the theme, and sentences are not good at digging up the theme to enrich the writing content. In thesis writing, there are often problems such as improper language, nonstandard words, inappropriate grammatical errors and unreasonable sentence structure, which reflect that students' basic language skills are not solid enough, the structure of the article is chaotic, the logic is unclear, and there are also problems such as lack of details and lack of discovery and excavation of main ideas and details. It can be seen that it is very necessary to pay more attention to the teaching of basic courses in English major education in colleges and universities. Judging from the papers submitted by students, the writing level is not high, some students' papers are unclear and unreasonable in structure, and there is no connection between the contents of the articles. The lack of logical relationship just piled up a few questions, and some students overlapped the content of the article before and after screening. Such a paper cannot guarantee the quality at all. In the teaching of professional writing course, we should pay attention to cultivating students' ability to write scientific papers.

3. Reform the writing course system and coordinate the writing time and career choice of graduation thesis.

The time conflict between graduation thesis writing and job hunting also seriously affects the quality of graduation thesis. In order to solve this problem, we can consider appropriately adjusting the time of graduation thesis or extending the writing cycle of graduation thesis to provide time and psychological guarantee for graduates to complete high-quality and high-level graduation thesis.

Adjust the curriculum arrangement of English majors and offer corresponding writing courses and academic paper writing courses. Professional thesis writing courses can teach students how to choose a topic, how to consult literature, how to determine problems, how to write the abstract, introduction, text, conclusion, thanks and other major parts, so that students can master the requirements and processes of thesis writing theoretically. Strengthen academic training, combine graduation thesis with professional course study, start with course thesis, attach importance to the writing process of social practice report and graduation practice report of course thesis, combine academic training with usual teaching, and carry out systematic academic writing training for students, laying a solid foundation for students to write graduation thesis. It is suggested that literature retrieval course and thesis writing course should be set up purposefully in lower grades according to different majors and students' actual situation. English writing courses, such as frontier lectures, should offer content related to thesis writing. Teachers can usually introduce the methods of academic research and thesis writing to students in class or through academic lectures, such as how to choose topics and organize materials, and what academic examples to follow when refining ideas. In normal teaching, teachers should try to guide students to discuss a different point of view or topic, and guide students to refine their own views on the basis of reasonable argumentation. Cultivate students' ability to think deeply, teach students how to choose topics and consult materials, how to write outlines and abstracts, how to understand documents, how to write thank-you letters, etc., and have high professional quality, comprehensive application ability and practical ability. Set up courses related to thesis writing in the semester before writing graduation thesis, and teach students how to choose topics, search and consult materials, how to write outlines and abstracts, and how to list thank-you letters for document writing. In this way, the preparation of graduation thesis runs through daily teaching, so that they can have a deeper understanding and full preparation for graduation thesis. In addition, they can also learn about the frontier trends of the subject and broaden students' horizons by making a report on the frontier lectures.

4. Strengthen monitoring, clarify responsibilities and improve supervision.

Insufficient attention is paid to the management process of undergraduate graduation thesis design, and there is a lack of perfect norms for the organization and implementation of graduation thesis design, or the norms are unclear, lack of operability, neglect of inspection and supervision, and ineffective implementation. For example, the topic of paper design is outdated and repetitive. Students' thesis design process is often in a state of herding sheep, and some students even copy their graduation thesis design. In addition, students are busy with graduation exams and employment on the eve of graduation, and sometimes they have no time to take care of them. Finally, many problems were found in the second review of the thesis design, and some papers even made low-level mistakes, but at this time these students have graduated, which caused great trouble for the perfection and filing of the thesis design.

Improving the quality of graduation thesis for English majors is a long-term and arduous task. Improving the quality of undergraduate graduation thesis is indeed a serious problem that must be faced squarely and urgently solved in current higher education. The problems exposed in undergraduate thesis writing also reflect the problems existing in higher education. We should treat the graduation thesis work with a highly responsible attitude, help students improve their English level, lay a good language foundation, create a good academic atmosphere, provide students with a high-quality scientific research platform, and gradually improve the quality of graduation thesis for English majors.