Professor An Listening to Student Reports		Dissertation Defense
International Student Reporting Her Dissertation		Deputy Dean Hu Hosting Dissertation Defense

On April 2, 2015, the pre-defense session took place in the meeting room B1-314 of our School’s building among the Master students of Communication (Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages-TCSOL). This was the debut pre-defense session for the Master’s degree program ever organized by our School. The review committee was made up of the supervisors of the communication and intercultural communication programs and four overseas Master students and two Chinese students supervised by our School teachers did their presentations. 

At his opening speech, Professor Liu Cheng, Deputy Dean, pointed out that the pre-defense was vital to the essay writing and the application for the Master’s degree. Then, the six applicants made their presentations on the subject choice and significance, literature review, data analysis, conclusion, new insight and creative achievements. The supervisors of the board commented their presentation afterwards. Despite a rehearsal, the pre-defense was conducted in accordance with review procedure and standards of the formal defense session. The purpose of the warming up activity was to help the applicants find out whether there was any problem to resolve in their essays, to develop their ability to make spontaneous response to queries about the writings and to ensure that the applicants could complete master dissertation and approved graduation defense with high quality. The supervisors of the board strictly checked the essay quality with rigorous scientific attitude and responsible professionalism. The two applicants who did not passed will rejoin on April 17.

The supervisors took a discussion on the issue of the result of pre-defense and cultivation of TCSOL master students after the session. Professor An Ran, Dean, indicated that the cultivation of international students should be gradually standardized. The Chinese writing ability of international students should be trained from Year 1. By writing book reports, help to improve international students’ Chinese writing ability gradually and lay a solid foundation for graduation dissertation. Moreover, international students’ essay should bring new ideas and show innovations and diversity research perspectives based on the previous research. The supervisor should take responsibility for the cultivation of students.

Professor An Ran, Professor Liu Cheng, Associate Professor Cui Shuhui, Associate Professor He Jijun, Associate Professor Shan Yunming, Associate Professor Huang Aiping and Associate Professor Li Bing participated in the pre-denfense session as the members of review committee. Master Students in 2013 Communication (TCSOL) and 2014 Communication (TCSOL) also attended the session.

( Written and Photo by Xuqin Yao )

Time：2015-04-02