Over the years, the School of Law of Southeast University has continuously strengthened the quality management of postgraduate dissertations. At present, it is the time for the pre-defense of master's degree dissertation of 2021 graduate students and the opening of master's degree dissertation of 2022 graduate students. In order to provide all-around dissertation writing guidance to graduate students, according to the basic process of writing and publishing academic dissertations, the College has provided guidance on the following topics: How to Find and Read Literature in Law? How to Choose a Topic for a Law Dissertation? How to Write Topics and Abstracts for Law Dissertations? How to Argue and Formulate a Law Dissertation? How to Publish SSCI in Law Dissertation? How to Utilize Efficient Research Tools in Law Research? The whole process training lectures were planned for all students and faculty members in order to further improve the quality of postgraduate dissertations.
At 19:00 pm on October 19, 2023, Prof. Song Hualin, Dean of Nankai University School of Law and Doctoral Supervisor, was invited by the School of Law of Southeast University to bring a lecture through Tencent online conference on the topic of How to find and read the literature of legal studies? to provide guidance to graduate students on dissertation writing and further improve the quality of graduate students' dissertations. Mr. Xiong Zhanglin, professor, doctoral supervisor and vice dean of Southeast University, presided over the lecture, and Mr. Shan Pingji, professor, doctoral supervisor and vice dean of Southeast University School of Law, acted as the talker. The lecture attracted more than 500 law teachers and students from different regions and schools to learn together, and the response was enthusiastic. Before the beginning of the lecture, Prof. Xiong Zhanglin, Vice Dean of the Law School of Southeast University, expressed his warm welcome and heartfelt thanks to Prof. Song Hualin's attendance. Prof. Song Hualin also expressed his great pleasure to exchange his research experience with students from all over the country.
The first part of the lecture clarified the scope and significance of reading literature. Prof. Song Hualin pointed out that if you don't start something alone, there must be a neighbor, you can't hold a topic to read the literature, and you should have a relatively wide range of literature to read. Appropriate search tools and methods are the key to efficient information collection. Prof. Song Hualin shared two search strategies, namely, the by-the-rope search and the by-cover search, on the basis of which the search methods of academic papers, academic writings, and foreign writings were introduced in detail, and the databases commonly used in the study of law were demonstrated. On the basis of the two search strategies, Prof. Song introduced in detail the search methods of academic papers, academic works and foreign treatises, and showed the databases commonly used in legal research. In addition, Prof. Song guided the students to turn their attention to factual materials through the way of governance advocated by Gu Yanwu, which is picking copper from the mountain, and made a detailed classification and patient explanation of materials such as legal norms, cases, newspapers and magazines, official websites and statistical data. Prof. Song analyzed how to measure the value of academic writings and how to reasonably identify the use of academic writings, and introduced the two major standards of measurement: the formal standard and the substantive standard.
The second part of the lecture centered on literature reading methods. Firstly, Prof. Song emphasized the importance of extensive reading, including legal norms, cases and foreign law writings, and suggested reading all kinds of literature beyond law on this basis. Secondly, it is important to read literature with chronological awareness, authenticity awareness and traceability awareness. Finally, Prof. Song introduced two types of reading methods: foundational reading and research reading. Fundamental reading includes reading basic, key and systematic books, and balancing the relationship between intensive reading and extensive reading. Prof. Song encouraged students to read more, think more and learn to learn together. Research reading involves reading the whole text and grasping the gist of the article, not only reading common ground literature to support one's own viewpoints, but also reading differentiated articles to build up one's own critical thinking, and then launching a more in-depth study on this basis.
The third part of the lecture centered on the efficient method of taking notes. Prof. Song pointed out that note-taking plays an important role in memorization and understanding, and introduced how to establish a note-taking framework. At the same time, Prof. Song emphasized the need to pay attention to key contents when taking notes, such as important ideas, materials, facts and profound discussions.
After Prof. Song Hualin introduced the main content of the lecture, Mr. Shan Pingji, the talker of the lecture, sincerely thanked Prof. Song Hualin for her wonderful teaching and sharing, and shared his own experience related to finding and reading legal literature.
In the interactive session, the law students actively asked questions. Prof. Song Hualin provided patient guidance to the students on the difficulties they encountered during the reading and searching process, and provided valuable suggestions for writing law academic papers in terms of pre-reading accumulation and making literature notes.
Finally, Mr. Xiong Zhanglin summarized the content of Prof. Song Hualin's lecture, encouraged students and teachers to continuously improve their academic level, and once again expressed his gratitude to Prof. Song Hualin for her wonderful sharing.
With his rich research experience and profound academic attainments, Prof. Song Hualin brought a wonderful academic feast to the attending teachers and students. The lecture provided teachers and students with valuable academic guidance, helping them to better master legal literature search and reading skills, and gain an in-depth understanding of different types of literature search strategies. As an important part of the postgraduate training of Southeast University, this lecture was a complete success.