School of Foreign Languages

The School of Foreign Languages (or SFL) of Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai was established on June 16th, 2003 and its dean is Professor Tao Wenhao, a doctor of English linguistics and postgraduate supervisor who studied at Oxford University. Professor Qian Guanlian, a renowned linguist in China, is its honorary dean. The School boasts a group of highly qualified teachers, including such doctoral supervisors as Professor Liu Xiangyu, Professor Zhou Liuxi, Professor Tian Guisen, and dozens of newly-recruited professors, associate professors, doctors, and masters, from top-ranking universities in China and many of whom have studied or worked abroad. Of the 81 teaching staff members, English, Japanese and Portuguese native teachers account for nearly 50%; 1/4 of those native teachers hold a PhD.

With College English teaching as its basis, the SFL undertakes the foreign language teaching of nearly 20,000 non-English majors. In November, 2007, College English was rated as one of the “Quality Courses” of the university and in the first term of 2007-2008 academic year, the listening and speaking courses of College English for non-English majors of 2007 adopted web-based instruction. In September, 2008, College English made all-around reform, allowing those students who have passed the CET 4 to take the compulsory courses of College English, with a wide variety of English courses to choose from. In September, 2009, the reform was further intensified by allowing those freshmen who excelled in the English proficiency test to directly take the compulsory courses of College English and, meanwhile, to sit for the CET4 in that term. In May, 2013, College English was rated as one of the “Quality Resource-sharing Courses” of Guangdong Province. In view of the status quo of College English teaching reform in China, the university is one taking the lead in this regard.

At the same time, the SFL focuses on training English majors and Japanese majors. In August, 2004, the English Department was founded and enrolled the first group of English majors in October of the same year, a total number of 150 students; in August, 2010, the Japanese Department was established and enrolled 87 Japanese majors in September of the same year; in September, 2010, the SFL and the School of Chinese established a collaborative program of English-TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) as a double major and 21 English majors began studying in this program; in July, 2011, the SFL was authorized to enroll postgraduate students; in September, 2012, 23 M.A. candidates in English Education were enrolled. Over the past decade, the SFL has developed into an institution with over 1,000 undergraduates and 43 postgraduates.

The guideline of the SFL is to highlight quality and innovation, so as to train first-rate interdisciplinary, independent English and Japanese professionals for Guangdong Province and the country at large. The school has been exploring every avenue to fine-tune its school-running features. It has established the English-French orientation, the English-Portuguese orientation, and the orientation of English Language and Literature for the English majors and the Japanese-English orientation and Business Japanese orientation for the Japanese majors. More practical and practice-based courses are offered for the third year and fourth year students to ensure the practicality of the curriculum.

Since its foundation, the SFL has been negotiating with a number of foreign universities and so far reached an agreement with five universities in the English-speaking countries, including the University of Bedfordshire and the University of Portsmouth in Britain, the University of Long Island in America, Griffith University in Australia, and Acadia University in Canada. In the near future, our international cooperative programs will be launched, to forge ahead with our cooperation and exchanges with foreign universities on the education of undergraduates, postgraduates and Ph. D candidates. The objective of the programs is to train qualified foreign language professionals, who have a good command of English, a solid knowledge of both the Chinese and Western cultures, and above all, an international vision.