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Practical teaching plays a more and more important role in the process of applied talents training. Taking accounting of Jiangcheng College, China University of Geosciences as an example, this paper expounds the prominent problems in its practical teaching, and puts forward ideas of improving the teaching content within the hierarchical practical teaching system of accounting in independent colleges. After eight years of development, Jiangcheng College of China University of Geosciences has become a domestic independent college with certain popularity, and its practical teaching system construction of accounting has made certain achievements. However, the most prominent problem in the practical teaching system is that the practical teaching content still cannot fully meet the market demand for multi-level talents. The current training courses of accounting are mainly those popular courses such as the Manual Simulated Training of Accounting, Accounting Computerization Training, Tax Filing Training, and Audit Training. Although these courses have made certain contribution to the cultivation of applied talents and to the development of discipline construction, as the employers ask for more and more diversified and compound applied talents, the imperfectness of the practical teaching content of accounting practical teaching system has been gradually revealed. Therefore, it is urgent to further clarify the levels of the practical teaching system, and enrich and perfect the practical teaching content. The hierarchy of the practical teaching system should be con 1 sidered first, for the collocation and cohesion of these training courses should be based on the requirements of different levels, and different levels and steps should be integrated into a whole. Usually, the practical teaching system of accounting could be divided into three levels: basic skill level, professional skill level and comprehensive training level. The basic skill level There is an old saying that great oaks grow from little acorns. This level is quite important, for it decides whether the accounting majors’ foundation is strong enough for later professional learning. Combining with the characteristics of weak cultural foundation of independent colleges (the third degree colleges) students, we thus in this level increase appropriate proportion of practical teaching content, focusing on training students' basic operation skills. And the specific arrangement is as follows: through the Introduction to Accounting, the accounting freshmen gain a fully understanding of the accounting major in the first semester. Introduction to Accounting is suggested to be added into 1 This paper is a phased achievement of the teaching and research project in Hubei, Research on Professional Practical Teaching System on Economic Management Professions in Independent Colleges. (project number: 2012451) International Conference on Economic Management and Trade Cooperation (EMTC 2014) © 2014. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 76 the practical teaching content, which is conducive to students’ general understanding of accounting, intriguing their interests of learning. Then, through Summer Cognitive Internship, the students could learn about the structure of the accounting institutions and accounting system, as well as the basic process of accounting work, thus to have a general knowledge of accounting practice work. At the same time, the Summer Cognitive Internship will also help students to accumulate certain perceptual knowledge for enterprise business process, laying the foundation for the study of basic professional courses in the future.At present, Summer Cognitive Internship is arranged in the summer vacation of the sophomore year, and it is suggested to be arranged in the summer vacation of freshman year, thus laying a foundation for the later basic professional course Principles of Accounting ahead of time. While the practice course, Manual Simulated Training of Accounting, could be arranged as a simultaneous course with Principles of Accounting, set up in the second semester, and the learning process in each section could be equipped with the corresponding practical training content. For example, when the teacher is in the teaching of the source documents, he(she) can organize the students to collect related source documents in daily life, such as the payment slip for purchasing, sales invoices, certificates of deposit and withdrawal slips, and ask the student to check those collected source documents, learning about the format, content, and filling requirements of all kinds of certificates, analyzing commonness and individuality of different kinds of certificates to determine whether the invoices are formal, and whether they could be used as vouchers for keeping accounts. The eight credit hours of practice courses on computer, Basic Accounting Training, could be arranged at the end of Principles of Accounting, the main contents including: basic writing norms of accounting, the filling and checking of source documents, the filling and checking of accounting vouchers, the compilation method of accounting voucher summary sheets, keeping accounts and trial balance, reconciliations and closing the books, preparation methods of bank balance reconciliation sheets, the filling of various kinds of accounting statements. Thus through repeated practice on the computer, the students, on the one hand, consolidate and deepen their understanding of the theoretical knowledge, on the other hand, gain further perceptual knowledge of accounting practice work. In this level, both manual simulation and computer simulation help to consolidate students' foundation. The professional skill level In the professional skills level, we mainly cultivate the students' professional skills through a series of professional practical teaching. At this level, training courses can be divided into three broad categories: ordinary professional skills training courses, comprehensive financial software training courses, and special skills training courses. All these courses could be arranged during the junior year. The first two kinds are required for all the students, while the third courses are advanced courses for the capable students to select as optional courses, which is helpful for us to cultivate students in different levels. In order to combine the accounting theory and practice together, we need to integrate the scattered branch knowledge to be coherent, and through the systematic training of accounting practical teaching system, make the students familiar with the whole process of accounting, and thus gain a further understanding of the main content of accounting. [1] Therefore, we could consider offering such 8-credit-hour courses to be the ordinary professional skills training courses as the Cost Accounting Training and Financial Management Training, Financial Analysis Training, Tax Training, Tax Declaration Training, Audit Training, connected with their corresponding theories. One similarity of these training courses is that they could build a simulated learning environment for students to improve their perceptual knowledge.Take the Financial Management Training for example. The training system offers the financial goals, main product introduction, production capacity, market situation, the corporate governance structure, business risk factors and countermeasures, three years’ financial statements of a simulated enterprise, linking together the basic knowledge of cash management, credit management, accounts receivable management, inventory management, comprehensive budget management, investment and financing decisions and capital structure decision in financial management, to make the student to have a comprehensive understanding of the application in the enterprise financial management.Combined with the current course Accounting Computerization Training, comprehensive financial software training courses