On January 17 and 18, the Department of Foreign Language Education held a seminar on teaching reform in 2017-18. Professor Jiang Guiying presented a detailed summary of the work of the Department in 2017. She also announced the Department’s work plan for 2018. Participating faculty members at the seminar discussed teaching reform, the feasibility of establishing course groups, plans for teaching and research, and faculty development.

As part of the seminar, Professor Pan Haiying, Dean of the School of Foreign Language Education at Jilin University, and Professor Chang Hui, Vice Dean of the School of Foreign languages at Shanghai Jiaotong University, shared their insights into the teaching of English to non-English majors at China’s most prestigious universities and the development of effective and intelligent level-based teaching system for the College English course, respectively.

In 2017, the Department of Foreign Language Education made rapid strides in teaching and research, social services, and faculty development. Its “2 + 2” teaching mode was refined and the utilization rate of autonomous learning platforms among students continued to rise, with all language courses for undergraduate students made accessible on the Internet.

During the same year, two courses, “Advanced College English Course" and “Foundation of College English Writing”, supervised by Professors Zhang Longhai and Jiang Guiying respectively, were included into Xiamen University’s third batch of online open courses and won “excellence” ratings from provincial educational authorities.

In December 2017, Professor Zhang Longhai’s “Appreciation of Classic Works by American Nobel Laureate Writers” course and Professor Jiang Guiying’s “Foundation of Academic English Writing” course were both included into Xiamen University’s fourth group of online open courses.

In 2017, Associate Professor Lu Yunfang received a research grant from the Ministry of Education; Professor Jiang Guiying won a grant for her research project “China-ASEAN Ocean Big Data Integrated Information Service Platform"; Associate Professor Hu Shen’ai and Assistant Professor Peng Xin each received a grant from the Xiamen University President’s Foundation; Lecturer Wu Zhenzhen won the second prize and best courseware award in the Xiamen UniversityYoung Faculty Members’Teaching Skill Competition. During the same year, Xiamen University students continued to shine in national English competitions and provincial English speech contests.

Going forward, the Department of Foreign Language Teaching intends to launch a new round of college English teaching reform, make full use of Web-based autonomous learning platforms, and give full play to the role of the curriculum groups.