April 14-16, “The 2nd Foreign Language Education Reform and Development Forum for Institutions of Higher Learning in China” was held in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province. More than 1,800 foreign language educators, scholars and administrators from colleges and universities all over China attended the meeting themed at “foreign language strategy, international talent and smart teaching”. Professor Chen Hong, dean of the School of Foreign Languages and Associate Professor Wu Peng, dean of College English Teaching Department 1, the School of Foreign Languages, attended the meeting and spoke at a parallel session.
This year’s forum is jointly sponsored by Beijing Foreign Studies University, the National Advisory Committee on Foreign Language and Literature Majors in Higher Education under the Ministry of Education, and the National Advisory Committee on College Foreign Language Teaching in Higher Education under the Ministry of Education. The meeting comprises of keynote speech and parallel session. At the keynote speech stage, distinguished educations in China, including Zhong Meisun, Peng Long, Cao Deming, presented their novel, prospective ideas on aspects of foreign language teaching in China’s colleges and universities. At the parallel session state, on behalf of their colleges or universities 76 foreign language educators voiced their opinions on and shared their experiences of ten hot issues, including classified objectives and courses offered for college English, hierarchical needs and feature cultivation of English majors, evaluation system and talent cultivation, smart teaching and smart learning, teaching design and research innovation, international talent cultivation and others. At the parallel session called “Classified objectives and courses offered for college English”, Professor Chen Hong and Associate Professor spoke on the topic of “Exploration into and practice on college English teaching and research system stylized as “one body two wings” that highlights the cultivation of international engineering talents”, introducing to the participants in the meeting the content, features, strengths and practical effects of the new reform on college English courses in Jiangsu University starting from 2006. They focused on the balanced efforts that have been made in this round of curriculum reform to cultivate the practical application capability, the critical thinking capability and the intercultural communicative capability of students, as well as the actual attention paid to the teaching capability, the research level and the sense of academic accomplishment of college English teachers.
The joint presentation made by Professor Chen Hong and Associate Professor Wu Peng was well acclaimed by all experts and scholars at the meeting. The many reforms carried out by Jiangsu University in college English teaching, especially the hierarchical service model based on the individualization and people-orientedness were quickly spread and heatedly discussed after the meeting. (School of Foreign Languages)
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