When writing academic papers, liberal arts graduate students should start with choosing the topic of the paper, and learn to master the level of academic papers as a whole through tempering the topic of the paper, which is also one of the basic requirements for cultivating and improving their research ability.
Choose the topic of the paper in the inquiry of the most interesting questions.
Writing academic papers for graduate students should be an enjoyable creative work and should not be a burden. I object to writing a paper for the sake of writing a paper. Many universities require graduate students to publish a large number of academic papers during their studies. If graduate students fail to complete the required number of academic papers, they cannot apply for dissertation defense or obtain a degree.
Some colleges and universities even stipulate that academic papers published by graduate students can be counted as the research results of tutors as long as they are signed by tutors, which further encourages tutors to encourage graduate students to write academic papers, but the quality of papers is getting worse and worse.
In my opinion, the cultivation of graduate students' writing ability lies in cultivating their interest in writing academic papers. This kind of interest is the interest in discovering scientific problems and exploring scientific laws. Only when graduate students have a strong scientific interest in a certain problem will they have a strong impulse to write academic papers. Without this impulse, it is difficult to write a good academic paper.
This writing impulse can come from reading, or it can be stimulated when reading other people's academic works, finding fallacies, or generating great doubts. The writing impulse of graduate students' academic papers comes more from observing social phenomena, finding "problems" in them, generating inspiration and stimulating impulses.
If graduate students have no impulse to write, it is best not to try to write academic papers. They can continue reading under the guidance of their tutors, participate in some social investigation activities, or participate in discussions organized by teachers and classmates to accumulate necessary knowledge.
What bothers many graduate students is that they don't know what knowledge to accumulate to finally stimulate their writing impulse. In fact, the accumulation of knowledge that can stimulate the writing impulse of graduate students does not come from the study of basic knowledge or basic theory. The accumulation of knowledge that can promote writing impulse often comes from the reading of exploratory research documents on academic frontier issues. There are a lot of controversies in these documents, and some viewpoints even impact the theoretical system of the existing system.
Here, I use a personal experience to illustrate this point. Before China joined the World Trade Organization, I read a translated document introducing the international standard of corporate social responsibility (SA8000). At the beginning, I was not familiar with SA8000, so I went to the enterprise to do research and asked the top management of more than a dozen enterprises. As a result, I found that only the executives of two enterprises knew about this standard, but they thought that this standard was a "green trade protection" measure adopted by western powers through China's accession to the WTO.
I went deep into the enterprise investigation and observed that the production site of the enterprise lacked labor safety protection, employees often worked overtime continuously, and the enterprise lacked integrity. So, I went back to consult the research literature about SA8000 at home and abroad, and had the impulse to write an academic paper "The Legal Deficiency of Corporate Social Responsibility in China". This paper was published in Enterprise Reform and Management in May 2005. Shortly after its publication, the seventh issue of Management Science, a copy of the newspaper in China Renmin University, was reprinted, which attracted wide attention from domestic scholars.
Grasp the essence of the problem through complex phenomena
Master of arts students must have a clear sense of problems when writing academic papers. Before writing an academic paper, you should first clearly answer what the "question" is, which is the most important basis for determining the theme of the paper. Strictly speaking, there is only one core issue discussed in any academic paper, and it is forbidden to have multiple topics in one paper. In the teaching practice, the author found that many graduate students are not sure about the problem and it is difficult to choose the topic of academic papers.
The easiest mistake to make is to treat the "phenomenon" you see as a "problem". In fact, "problem" is not an isolated concept, but a more essential relationship between two or more concepts, which is deeply hidden under "phenomenon".
For example, the price fluctuation of agricultural products is just a phenomenon. But in a short period of time, the price fluctuates abnormally, which is the "problem"! Why have the prices of agricultural products continued to rise for several months and the increase is very large? This abnormal price fluctuation is a "problem" We need to study the impact of abnormal price fluctuations, the reasons for abnormal price fluctuations and the measures to control abnormal price fluctuations.
For another example, in a long period of time (such as 30 years), it is also a "problem" to study the law of agricultural product price fluctuation. Why do prices fluctuate periodically? Why did the price keep falling in the first 20 years and keep rising in 10? Why has the average price increase remained within 3% in the past 30 years? Wait, these are the real "problems". There is no special significance to study this phenomenon as a whole. Only by identifying the "problem" and conducting targeted research on the real "problem" can it have important research value.
Another common mistake is to treat "false questions" as "real questions", and researchers have made great efforts to draw correct and convincing conclusions.
For example, I recently read a book written by a famous agricultural economist and reviewed the agricultural policy in the past 30 years of reform and opening up. There is a short article in the book, which studies the influence of government financial expenditure on agriculture on farmers' income growth. His conclusion is that the government's financial expenditure on supporting agriculture is increasing and farmers' income is increasing. The process of demonstration is to put two aspects of data, the former increases and the latter also increases. Therefore, he reached the important conclusion of "two increases".
It seems that his research on whether government financial investment has an impact on farmers' income increase is a "problem", but it is actually a "false problem" within the framework of China's government financial expenditure system for supporting agriculture. Because, more in-depth analysis can be found that the main contribution of farmers' income growth in the past 30 years comes from the growth of "wage income" (that is, working income), followed by "agricultural production and operation income", and the main contribution comes from the price increase of agricultural products such as grain. And "property income" and "transfer payment income" are not important reasons for farmers to increase their income.
If we use quantitative analysis to test, we will find that "transfer payment income" is not significantly related to farmers' income growth. In other words, farmers' income in the past 30 years was mainly obtained through market transactions, including labor transactions and agricultural products transactions. At the same time, we also find that the government's financial expenditure on supporting agriculture is mainly used for the expenditure of agriculture, forestry, water and other undertakings, which is to increase the "head fee" of rural "seven stations and eight institutes" institutions, and the increase of this undertaking can not be directly translated into the increase of farmers' income, nor can it be indirectly translated into the increase of farmers' income.
Therefore, it is a "pseudo-question" to study whether government financial input has an impact on farmers' income. Of course, the government's financial expenditure on supporting agriculture has affected the supply of rural public goods, and farmers have enjoyed the rural public goods or quasi-public goods provided by the government, but this public enjoyment has not directly translated into market profits and significantly increased farmers' income, at least there is no statistical significance between them.
The topic selection must be supported by a solid theoretical foundation.
Compared with investigation reports, work reports or other papers, academic papers may be inseparable from the basic research paradigm of "finding problems, analyzing problems and solving problems". But the biggest difference between academic papers and other papers can also be said to be the essential difference, that is, academic papers must emphasize the theoretical basis as a support, and use certain theories to guide the analysis and research process. This kind of theoretical support often directly reflects the theoretical value of academic paper topic selection.
Without a correct theoretical basis and rigorous scientific analysis and demonstration under the guidance of theory, even if the author has a clear idea of the "problem" to be studied, he can't extract a scientific topic with strict logic, let alone write an excellent academic paper.
For example, in the study of the new rural cooperative medical system, why do farmers still refuse to participate when the government gives them some money? Many news reports, investigation reports and work summaries attribute this problem to "insufficient publicity on the new rural cooperative medical system" and "farmers don't realize the benefits (significance) of the new rural cooperative medical system". This is a simple analysis, of course, this analysis is easily accepted in practical work, which is conducive to further improving related work.
However, from the perspective of academic papers, the reason is not so simple.
This involves the question of "whether farmers' decision-making on medical treatment is rational". We believe that the farmer is an economic rational person. He thinks it is not cost-effective to participate in the new rural cooperative medical system, so he is unwilling to participate.
This involves the doctor-patient relationship between farmers and hospitals, and there is "information asymmetry". Although medical institutions have government subsidies, they have increased unnecessary medical services and raised drug standards and prices. It has caused farmers to spend more money on medical treatment than when they did not participate in the new rural cooperative medical system, and it is impossible to truly achieve the goal of government sponsorship of the new rural cooperative medical system to solve the problem of "difficult and expensive medical treatment" for farmers.
There is a phenomenon that "insiders" in medical institutions are out of control regardless of doctors. Therefore, the topic selection of academic papers should be based on the theory of decision rationality, information asymmetry and insider control, and can be completed through in-depth and rigorous logical analysis.
It should be pointed out that although we are studying the same "problem", different research purposes and perspectives will lead to different basic theories, which is often one of the important reasons why an academic paper has caused many controversies. This kind of controversy is often directly manifested in the titles of academic papers.
For example, it is also a study of rural labor transfer in China. According to Chenery's theory, some scholars calculated the land-labor ratio of agriculture in China, and figured out that there must be a large number of surplus labor force in China, so they wrote an academic paper that "farmers can only increase their income and get rich by transferring".
In addition, some scholars believe that the more developed the economy is, the more advanced the industrial structure of the national economy is, and the number of labor accommodated by manufacturing-oriented industries is becoming more and more limited, so it is impossible to realize the complete transfer of rural surplus labor in China. Therefore, only by developing agricultural modernization in rural areas can farmers become rich through rural industrialization and small urbanization.
Of course, the title of the paper written by the latter will also reflect another theoretical point of view. Two completely different conclusions are drawn from two different research perspectives on the same "problem", and the research process is based on two different theories.
In addition to the three important principles mentioned above, Master of Arts students should also pay attention to mastering other skills when choosing topics for academic papers.
Some academic papers use advanced research methods in their topics. Papers using quantitative analysis methods directly use the name of econometric model as the core content of the title. Papers that use empirical analysis methods also use subheadings to write research objects or sample samples in the titles of academic papers. It is also very common to directly use the research of case name as the title of papers using case analysis method. These methods are conducive to highlighting the innovation and innovation value of academic papers.
The titles of some academic papers are research conclusions, which may clearly make some scientific judgments, or put forward some valuable academic discussions under certain restrictions, or confirm and inherit the existing theoretical system, or break through and develop the existing theoretical system.
This method can highlight the significance of academic papers in solving practical problems, and is also very popular with readers. There are also academic papers that have used their brains in the wording of the topic, such as ABC, which analyzes the cause of a problem, "new articles" that suggest countermeasures to a problem, and "torture for 60 years" on a problem, which are easy to attract readers' attention.
The author suggests that graduate students should adopt these methods according to their actual needs in writing academic papers.