On May 26, 2016, coordinated by Deputy Dean Prof. Ma Dongmei, the colloquium for M.A and MTI students was held in the Conference Room of the School of Foreign Languages (SFL) to promote the research abilities of postgraduate students majoring in Literature, Linguistics, and Translation and Interpreting. Prof. Chen Meihua, Dean of SFL, and Dr. Ma Qiang, the Party Secretary, delivered their speeches, and Prof. Wu Lanxiang and Dr. Tang Bin commented on each academic paper presented to this colloquium.
Speaking from his personal experience, Dr. Ma Qiang emphasized the importance of research abilities in his opening remark, and encouraged the postgraduate students to take advantage of the abundant resources and firm platform available to them. He hoped that, nourished by the academic environment of Southeast University (SEU), postgraduate students can think high and seek chances of further education in top overseas universities.
As the dean of SFL and a supervisor of M.A students, Prof. Chen Meihua felt strongly about the space for improvement with the postgraduate program. After comparing the academic requirements for postgraduate students between top overseas universities and SEU, and the course loads between science students of SEU and English students of SEU, in relation to the discipline evaluation and the reform trend for postgraduate programs, Dean Chen urged the students to consolidate their mastery of theories, enhance their research consciousness and produce high-quality academic papers. By the time they leave Southeast University, they would have publications on CSSCI journals and would be able to present innovative graduation theses, Dean Chen hoped.
Before the paper presentation, M.A student Wang Huiying introduced to the other students how she wrote literature review. Taking SEU online library as an example, she listed some useful websites for reference searching and gave some precious tips about data collection. M.A student Wu Yang was the first to present her paper entitled “A Postmodernist Approach to Don DeLillo’s Short Story ‘Baader Meinhof’” which looks into the postmodernist feature of “nothingness” from the aspects of theme, characters, plot and language. Tian Yuanyuan, Huang Yan and Feng Ye, the three M.A students majoring in Linguistics, showed three different areas of interest in their papers. Miss Tian centered on the use of network buzzwords by referring to the evaluation theory in systemic functional linguistics; Miss Huang analyzed the application of “flipped classroom” teaching model by reflecting upon her own experience of teaching College English Writing in Southeast University; and Miss Feng reported her findings in the analysis of commercial advertisements by using two terms of cognitive linguistics: conceptual metaphor and conceptual blending. As a representative of MTI students on Suzhou campus, Yuan Jinming showed her interest in academic research and shared her views with the other M.A students. Her essay “An Eco-translatological Analysis of Tourist Attraction Translation — A Case Study of Suzhou Garden Museum” came from her fieldwork and the major arguments revealed her efforts of combining theory with practice.
Commenting respectively on the reports of the five speakers, Prof. Wu and Dr. Tang affirmed their choice of research subjects and their close concern for the contemporary social life. They pointed out that, though majoring in different academic disciplines, the five students shared some traits in common, that is, they have tried to apply the latest theories to the research texts and logically developed their ideas before they came to a reasonable conclusion. Besides the two teachers’ leading role in the meeting, the other students also contributed to the discussion by raising good questions.
The colloquium lasted for more than 2 hours and did not come to a successful close until 12 am. As an academic event in celebration of SEU’s anniversary, the colloquium had won the support of the executive leaders of SFL.
(Reported by Wu Lanxiang; Photographed by Tang Bin)
