Giving Wings of “Non-General”Languages to “General”Majors

发布者:王泽璞发布时间:2018-02-20浏览次数:78

Sun Sichu, a freshman of the College of Foreign Students of NKU, felt a little down when he just entered the university, because he chose the world history as his major but was transferred to the Russian major. However, his depression did not last long, because he found that as long as he joined a project of NKU, he could still learn the world history he liked.

The project of cultivating interdisciplinary undergraduate talents of non-general language majors and Humanities & Social Sciences majors- is a teaching reform measure taken by NKU in September, 2017, which is also called the project of the cultivation of“general plus non-general”undergraduate talents.

To Cultivate Interdisciplinary Talents to Meet Needs of The Nation

In recent years, along with the advancement of “the Belt and Road” and the construction of Community of Human Destiny, more and more importance is attached to the interdisciplinary talents with an international vision. Recently, the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council, China's Cabinet, have jointly issued a guideline on enhancement and improvement of Chinese and foreign exchanges of humanities. But there is no denying that universities and colleges have not done enough to cultivate interdisciplinary talents, which means that students of foreign languages major lack the background of other disciplines and students of other disciplines fail to have a good command of foreign languages.

From the perspective of supply-side reform, NKU has explored and implemented the project of cultivating“general plus non-general”undergraduate talents. Duan Wenbin, the vice-director of Office of the Leading Group for Education System Reform of NKU, told the reporter from China Science Daily that this project will help to address the supply-demand of talents dilemma in structure, enhance students’ competitiveness and serve for our nation’s new pattern of opening up.

 According to Duan Wenbin, four colleges are involved in this project now, including the College of Foreign Languages, History College, College of Tourism and Service Management and School of economics, covering three “general” majors which are world history , tourism management and international business and four “non-general”majors which are German, France, Japanese and Russian. The freshmen from these seven majors can sing up for this project voluntarily , and after an examination, three students of “general”majors will choose German, France, Japanese or Russian as their second major and four students of “non-general”majors will choose world history, tourism management or international business as their second major.

This project comprises four years, and those students who pass the examinations will be granted with Bachelor Degree in Foreign Languages and Humanities &Social Sciences Bachelor's Degree on their graduation day. There are 61 students passing the examination in total as the first ones to attend this project which was very hot at the time of signing up, for example, 77 students signed up for this project, but only 29 admitted with an acceptance rate of 37%.

“Student-Designed”Double Degrees’ Integration but not their combination

According to Duan Wenbin, this project will single out every student’s cultivation plan by respecting students’ will to form 12 kinds of “student-designed”double degrees’ cultivation plan with moderate adjustment instead of adding a foreign language to certain humanities & social sciences major. The students participating in this project will not study in their original majors. Instead, they will have independent class system, where CFL will be responsible for their foreign courses during the first two years and involved colleges of humanities & social sciences for their professional courses during the last two years.

“From the perspective of teaching reform. The biggest difference of this project from others is to break up the major - minor mode and make them both majors.”Yan Guodong, Dean of CFL, said that the major-minor mode mainly solve the problem of combining foreign language majors with humanities&social sciences majors while this project is aimed at solving the problem of internalizing all humanities&social sciences majors.

“It means that this projects is aimed at a double combination of other majors and foreign languages. Therefore, this project will give wings of seven “non-general”languages  to all humanities&social sciences majors and offer them chances and possibilities of going global. And only in this way can we realize the goal of “Global NK.”said Mr.Yan, “In this way, students of NK will have a command of s second foreign language with a professional level besides English.”

However, since the students participating in the “general plus non-general” project need to finish the courses of two majors withiin four years, how is the quality guaranteed?

According to Mr. Yan, the early examination is the first thing to guarantee the final quality and the following “student-designed” teaching plan is actually a kind of intensive training which will have a double speed and quantity compared with the students who don’t participate in this project. Meanwhile, students need to get 180 credits to fully cover the compulsory courses of two majors and guarantee the integrity of knowledge structure.

“As “student-designed” double degrees, the project of cultivating“general plus non-general”undergraduate talents is a new starting point for the reform of interdisciplinary talents cultivation. It is not to combine two training plans of two majors but to integrate them to one and stress the complementary relationship between the two majors.” Duan Wenbin said that many colleges and universities in our country have two or more campuses, and the distance between different campuses objectively causes trouble for students to do two degrees. Therefore, this project can break this “objective restriction” to make sure of students’ study by changing “students moving”into “teachers moving”.

The Project Will Continue to Expand Despite of Many Challenges

The project of cultivating “general plus non-general”undergraduate talents also brings many challenges besides its benefits, such as students’ study stress. Wang Hanjing, the freshman of CFL from “International Business plus France”class, feels the stress deeply.

“There will be more learning stress to participate in this project.” Wang Hanjing sai frankly, “It is only required to finish one French book for students of French majors in one term, but we have finished two now. Besides, the major of international business also requires us learn C++ programming and advanced mathematics for science departments, so I feel a little more stressful.”

Therefore, NKU has specially designed a quit system, which means that students can drop out of the project at the end of a semester and continue to study in their original major. But Wang Hanjing said that nobody ever wanted to quit now.

At the same time, teachers need to meet higher requirements of this project. “Teachers need to finish the compulsory courses of three years within two years and they must make sure that students meet the national requirements for foreign languages talents. So it indeed brings teachers some new challenge with such heavy work in such short time. “ Du Weihua, Vice-Dean of CFL, said, “But when I see that the students in project classes are motivated to learn foreign languages, I myself feel so pleased and energetic.”

Yan Guodong said that this project has also brought some challenges to the faculty building of NKU. “ Let’s take CFL as an example, if the project continues to expand with more classes, every non-general language major will need to bring in around five to eight and one to two foreign teachers teachers within a few yeas, which will need more support from the Department of Personnel and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

However, NKU has great determination to continue to advance the project of cultivating“general plus non-general”undergraduate talents despite of many challenges.

“ This project will be moderately expanded in 2018, so there will be more general majors and non-general majors participating in the pilot project as well as more students.”Duan Wenbin revealed that besides recruitment of students in a large category, NKU will further advance the policy of cultivating students in a large category. So those majors meeting the requirements will gradually open compulsory and optional courses and quicken the building of live classroom and live class to advance online learning. “In this way, double degrees will be a choice for students of all majors.”

“The project of cultivating interdisciplinary internationalized talents of foreign language majors and humanities&social sciences majors is recently an important measure of NKU which is determined to arrange the teaching resources with innovation and comprehensive consideration by breaking up the barriers between different colleges and different majors to optimize the mode of cultivating talents. Zhu Guanglei, the vice president of NKU, believed that the new mode of cultivating talents was able to cultivate the talents our nation urgently need for the research of non-English countries and regions and guarantee the Belt and Road Initiative based on the understanding of different languages.