Supervisors report widespread problems with Chinese international students’ dissertations.
The following key factors may have been overlooked during the rigorous research process, which in turn affects the grading:
1. Inappropriate topic selection
The topics proposed by some teachers are too broad and need to be further subdivided. The title is vague, the thesis is confusing, the arguments are unclear, the length is long, the research basis is missing, and the results are insufficiently supported.
2. Literature review and chapter structure problems
Chaotic thinking, vague structure, writing without logic, leading to difficulty in understanding the article or overstatement, lack of rigorous debate between viewpoints, difficult to show in-depth critical analysis. If the framework is misplaced, the content of the paper is confusing and lacks logic, making it difficult to meet the requirements of the review and the value of follow-up work is low.
3. Language problems
There are more language problems, such as grammatical errors, disorganised sentence structure, improper matching of phrases and spelling mistakes. Many students could not even write correct sentences easily; in addition, some students still used colloquial expressions such as “I”, “you” and “we”. Scientific texts are more resistant to this expression.
4. Typographical errors
Typographical problems relate to reference marking, footnote addition, header and footer setting and page numbering, and table of contents generation. Currently, more than 80% of students still fail to apply reference formats correctly (e.g., Harvard and APA formats are mixed, and MLA and APA formats are difficult to recognise). In addition to this, footnote addition, header and footer setting and page numbering are also difficult. Cataloguing is not difficult, it just requires knowledge and familiarity with the techniques.
