The cultivation of innovation practical ability needs to be carried out on the basis of the previous investigations, and the previous research work plays an important role in the engineering students' progressive innovation. We take the course of "frontier in discipline" as an example to introduce the basic situation of the course and the literature citation of students when completing the course paper; analyze the emphasis to the new literature in recent 3-5 years and the citation data; compare the literature citation of Chinese and foreign languages, point out that domestic students do not pay enough attention to collecting the development status of international research when sorting out the papers. The possible reasons are given. Finally, the paper summarizes the references cited in the process of Engineering College Students' thesis writing, and gives some suggestions.