From Reflection to Thesis: An Academic Writing Workshop in Chinese Studies

This workshop invites young scholars from the Chinese academia to share academic writing and research experiences with graduate students from the Master's program in Chinese at National Tsing Hua University. The event focuses on key aspects of academic paper writing and is organized into four sessions: “Research Problem Awareness,” “Literature Review,” “Text Analysis,” and “Research Methods.”

In the “Research Problem Awareness” session, the speaker pointed out that research problems often stem from “cognitive conflict,” which refers to the dissonance between existing knowledge and new information. Researchers need to articulate this conflict within an academic context to establish the legitimacy of their problem awareness and research foundation. The “Literature Review” session emphasized the importance of reviewing existing research to understand the current advancements in the academic community regarding the problem at hand, to avoid duplicating studies, and provided actual paper examples to demonstrate how to contextualize and integrate previous findings into the discussion.

The “Text Analysis” session examined how to discover new research questions within familiar texts through the perspectives of textual reading, the transmission of literature, and historical-cultural contexts. It encouraged researchers to temporarily set aside their existing understandings and approach analysis with a mindset of rereading. The “Research Methods” session, based on the characteristics of humanities research, pointed out that research methods must align with research problem awareness, and researchers should design appropriate processing steps according to the materials and research objectives.

Additionally, both days of the event included comprehensive discussion times, with participating students actively asking questions and engaging in lively exchanges. A total of 12 feedback forms were collected after the event, and overall, the content of each session received positive evaluations, indicating that this workshop is insightful and beneficial for graduate students in understanding academic writing and research practices.