To promote graduate students' active learning, deep reading of high quality papers was done by graduate students enrolled in biochemistry and microbiology pharmacy curriculum offered by college of life science, Jiangxi Normal University from 2013 to 2015. The number of graduate students, who participated in the course in 2013, 2014, and 2015 were eleven, thirteen and fifteen, respectively. Through deep reading of papers, presentation, and group discussion in the lecture, these graduate students have improved their academic performances effectively, such as literature search, PPT document production, presentation management, specialty document reading, academic inquiry, and analytical and comprehensive ability. The graduate students also have increased their understanding level of frontier research, scientific research methods, and experimental methods.