The School of Foreign Languages, dating back to the Foreign Language Teaching Department founded in 1999 and then Department of Foreign Languages, was established in April 2006. Today, the school consists of two majors, English and German. There are currently 503 undergraduate students learning in the school. In addition to the two majors, the school is also responsible for the teaching of English, German and Japanese of postgraduates, undergraduates, college students, students of Sino-foreign cooperation programs and students of continuing education of the university.
The school owns five teaching and research offices, namely, an English office, a German office and three college English offices. The school has 115 faculties and staff, including 104 full-time teachers, seven teachers with PhD degree, eight PhD candidates, seven professors and 30 associate professors. More than 70% of the teachers have master's degree. The school has two distinguished teachers, five academic leaders, and six foreign teachers of English and German. The school's English Language and Literature is a university-level key discipline. The school has one university-level teaching team and two excellent courses. . In the quadrennial provincial teaching achievements assessment, the school has for two consecutive times won provincial excellence prize. The school has been granted five provincial teaching research programs. In recent years, the school has completed more than 30 teaching research programs above university level, won more than 20 teaching and scientific research awards above departmental level, and published more than 400 papers.
Well-equipped, the school's teaching, laboratory and office buildings occupy an area of 4,000 square meters. The school owns nine multimedia network audio and visual laboratories and six simulation language labs (over 1900 square meters), with equipment of worth of 5.5 million yuan. The school is preparing to build a simultaneous interpretation laboratory. The 164-square-meter library of the school keeps 7765 books, 2189 audiovisual disks, and subscribes 85 foreign periodicals and seven foreign language newspapers. The school integrates the FM radio station and SATV system with the English-teaching LAN to form an equipment support system for the university's foreign language teaching. These facilities create a favorable environment for students to learn foreign language on their own.
Through more than a decade's efforts and relying on the university's strengths in disciplines, the school has developed its own characteristics and advantages. For freshmen and sophomores, the school focuses on building their language foundation and for juniors and seniors on developing their characteristics. Since the first graduates from the school, the students' pass rate in TEM-4 has been 20% higher than the national average for eight consecutive years. Pass rate of students of the German major has also been higher than the national average in PGG. In addition to the professions of foreign language teaching, training, and translation, quite a number of graduates from the school are working in international trade, overseas contraction and management.
The school has established partnership with a number of foreign universities including the University of Aberdeen, the University of Portsmouth, Aachen University of Technology and Bluegrass Community and Technical College. The school has sent nearly 50 students to study abroad as postgraduates. These efforts have expanded the school and university's international influence, broadened students' vision, and created favorable conditions for promoting graduates' employment.
