Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core has placed teaching and research in an important strategic position that gives priority to development. The School of Foreign Languages in Nankai University actively plans to consolidate the spirit of the CPC Central Committee's important instructions, actively promotes the development of teaching and scientific research, upholds the idea of advocating virtue and cultivate people, besides it abides by the laws of education so as to cultivate a compound foreign language talent with all-round development with virtue, wisdom and beauty.
seeking reform in education; clarifying goals in talents cultivation
After years of exploration, School of Foreign Languages has set up the goals of talents cultivation as foreign language specialty, humanistic accomplishment, international perspective, Chinese feelings and characteristics of Nankai. Based on this, the teaching reform has been completed. At present, Japanese, Translation, Russian, Germany and English department have complete to adjust and optimize their professional talents cultivation programs reform. For example, the translation major adjusts the compulsory courses from original module: language skills and translation skills to language skills, translation skills and general knowledge series. German department integrated professional skills training courses into comprehensive training courses and opened research courses. Japanese department established advanced courses, opened summer semester in Japanese teaching economic management, political law and other general courses, closely cooperated with Northeastern University and other first-class universities based on the idea of training high-end and compound foreign language talents, its Study abroad program is supported by social power. Courses like Russia Overview, Russian culture innovated teaching organization form, making an interactive classroom atmosphere, increasing students’ participation in classroom activities. At the same time, all majors implement the system of academic tutors. Teachers meet students regularly to guide them in laying down solid basic professional skills, strengthening humanistic accomplishments and expanding their horizons.
Improve the professional structure vigorously. In 2017, Nankai University-Glasgow Graduate School of the United Kingdom opened a new master's program in English language and literature (translation and professional practice). In the same year, the school also added a master's degree in German language and literature at the second level, adding non-linguistic majors such as Italian and Portuguese, and the number of undergraduate majors reached 9. The professional structure of the college is constantly improving and constantly adapting to the needs of national talents to meet needs in Nankai University’s talent cultivation, providing talents and channels to support the school's international development strategy.
Committed to training compound talents. In 2017, the compound international dual-degree program for non-lingual specialties and humanities and social sciences was started, opening up a new road for the country to train high-level Belt and Road construction talents. Nankai University training project of non-linguistic major and humanities and social sciences to produce compound international undergraduate talent is an important step in our school in recent years, which determined to innovate, co-ordinates teaching resources throughout the school, breaks the barriers to colleges and professional training, optimizes personnel training mode. The model can train researchers in non-English-speaking countries and regions, satisfy the urgent need of the country to provide support for the Belt and Road initiative based on interoperability between languages.
Renewing the Educational Concept and Exploring the Characteristics of Foreign Language School
Enrich and develop the college teaching content, with the spirit of reform and innovation, we continue to explore the education mode with foreign language characteristics within Nankai University. Running higher education is a matter of national importance and a matter of national future. Guided by the spirit of the important speech of General Secretary Xi Jinping, the College of Foreign Languages follows the trend of the times, develops its own characteristics, and closely focuses on the objective of quality education for public ability so that education and teaching can effectively develop synergistically with each other and gradually find out the characteristics of running a foreign language college.
The college takes advocating virtue and cultivating people as the fundamental task, and also building foreign languages personnel training system with Nankai public characteristics. In order to achieve this goal, teachers in classroom combined with the characteristics of foreign languages, while teaching students knowledge of language and literature and foreign cultures, imperceptibly gave students ideological and political education to help students establish the correct values and outlook on life in the training students’ patriotic spirit at the same time, combined with the characteristics of young college students in the new era, highlighting the sense of responsibility to train students. Each department organizes a series of activities such as Department Chairperson's Message for undergraduate students. Each department’s directors and professors interviewed the undergraduates in a face-to-face manner to guide students to establish their sense of responsibility and promote the all-round development of moral, intellectual, physical and aesthetic education.
The college adheres to the hundred books reading project, focusing on improving students' ability of critical thinking. Knowledge learning is the central task of undergraduate study. How to make students accept and gain more knowledge in short college life has always been an important subject in undergraduate teaching. In order to enhance students' level of knowledge learning, the college proposes the following calls: undergraduates should read 100 books in a four-year period so as to broaden their horizons and improve their foreign language proficiency, practical ability and critical thinking skills. Because of the hundred books reading project, students' language knowledge and comprehensive ability has been greatly improved, and at the same time by reading , they make up for the limitation that students only focus on language learning, grammar, ignores thinking ability, effectively enhance the students Critical thinking ability.
Inherit the outstanding tradition of foreign drama performance, focus on improving the overall quality of students. Drama performance is the fine tradition of the college. As early as the mid-eighties of the last century, students translated the classic Chinese drama into the foreign language onto the stage. In the process of drama performance, all the repertoire is self-directed and self-directed by the students. Some outstanding plays from the older generation playwright, such as Camel Shoko, Thunderstorm, have been performed by students, and they went to the United States, Japan and Hong Kong to show them and are highly praised by domestic and foreign audiences. Drama is a medium to enhance exchanges with foreign universities, to spread Chinese culture to world, and a good way to cultivate foreign language talents with a good overall quality. In 2014, the English drama performance was arranged in the summer semester as an Integrated Skills Practice in English course for the first time, and was first opened to the general public. It attracted students' representatives from key high schools in Tianjin and received good results. Practice shows that the combination of drama performance and foreign language teaching in foreign language drama performances can effectively promote classroom teaching, which is a successful exploration of combining professional knowledge with Second Class.
Solid progress in academic research and constant emergence of scientific research results
Academic research is not only an important way of improving specialized knowledge and widening academic horizon but an effective of appreciating the charm of a discipline.
Optimization of the management of scientific research. College of Foreign Languages has established seven cross-linguistic research centers, including Linguistic Study Center, Foreign Literature Study Center, Translation Study Center, East-Asian culture study Center, Center for Chinese Culture Study and Spread, Center for Foreign Language Education and Teacher Development Study and Center for Cross-Cultural and Regional Study, all of which are responsible for the organization and management of the scientific research through resources integration, strength enhancement and standard promotion and have greatly advanced the development of teaching and scientific research.
In the past five years, the experts and scholars have actively been engaged in academic research to explore the deep meaning of their disciplines as well as accomplish their teaching tasks with high quality, which contributes a lot to the increase of scientific research programs and the spread of the academic influence of College of Foreign Languages. The college has received 19 projects of NSSFC, 17 projects of national ministries and commissions including the Ministry of Education and 39 provincial funds projects such as Tianjin Social Science Funds, among which two are major projects of NSSFC and one is the key project of NSSFC. The research contents have fully demonstrated the social responsibility of the teachers in College of Foreign Languages of NKU. For example, Professor Li Bing who hosts “the Research and Study of Across-Border Endangered Indo-European language- Wakhan Tajik(2014)”, Professor Miaojv who hosts“ the Building and Applied Study of Bilingual Terminology(2015)”, Professor Yan Guodong, who hosts “ the Translation and Study of the Important Accounts of the Russians who ever lived in the Qing Dynasty(2015)” and Professor Liu Ying, who hosts” the Literature and Historical Research and Discipline Construction of American Literature Geography(2016)” , all of them woks hard with strong will and has achieved excellent scientific research results despite of the great difficulty and long time of their projects.
Experts and scholars of foreign languages are all devoted to their academic work. Over the past five years, 14 academic monographs, 12 translation works and 228 thesis have been published, 84 of which have been chosen to CSSCI. The monographs and thesis have gained numerous Excellent Achievement Awards, including the first and third prize of Tianjin Social Science Excellent Achievement Award, the third prize of the Fourteenth Social Science Excellent Achievement Award of Tianjin and the third prize of the Seventh Universities’ Scientific Research Excellent Achievement Award.
Broadening of international cooperation and widening of international perspective
Being core talents to rejuvenate our nation and enter the international stage in the 21st century, College of Foreign Languages puts much emphasis on broadening the international perspectives and developing the specialized knowledge and skills of both teachers and students. The college is active in launching domestic and international academic exchanges, having organized multiple forums and seminars by inviting famous scholars; at the same time, it also encourages the teachers to give lectures and exchange ideas abroad as well as attend domestic and international academic meetings to promote international cooperation. The college has sent many teachers to act as the presidents and teachers of Confucius Institutes in Britain, France and Japan. The college also has offered various platforms to encourage teachers and students to enter wider international stage.
Besides, the college pays much attention to the spread of Chinese culture , so many teachers are devoted to exploring the nature, laws and strategies of Chinese culture’s “going global” policy to actively follow important strategic needs of the nation and offer advice on strategic policies. Adhering to its humanities and academic traditions of NKU, the college has established an open academic platform through the integration of the academic resources, which has offered great support for the cultural development strategies of the nation. For example, a series of articles like Study on the Translation Rewriting for Chinese Culture’s Going Global, which are hosted by Professor Lv, who has promoted the cultural exchanges between China and English countries, Japan, Russia and Germany, and who have advanced the spread of China’s excellent traditional cultures and strengthened its international influence.
To cultivate all undergraduate and part of graduate in a international way, the College has established NKU-Glasgow Unified Graduate Program. This program has advanced the reform and development of the internalization of graduates’ education even in the whole nation as well as in NKU; at the same time, it also plays an important role in cultivating international talents. The college also continually attracts outstanding foreign teachers with 21 at present covering all majors, which has pushed all subjects’ further development. Meanwhile, the college has diversified the ways of international exchanges, encouraging more and more teachers and students to take part in international exchanges annually. So far, the college has signed cooperation agreements with 23 top universities (among them 21 are school level and 2 are college level) and the scale of the students who participate in international exchanges has also increased, from 23 person-time in 2011 up to 280 in 2017; the exchange level has gone up to a new level, shifting from more undergraduates to more graduates and doctors, showing an obvious effect of international cultivation and making much contribution to the goal of “Global NKU”.
