The Department of College English in the School of Foreign Studies is responsible for teaching College English to all non-English-major undergraduate students each semester at the University of Science and Technology Beijing. It offers a variety of courses dealing with the acquisition of language skills at different levels, and offers courses in English literature, linguistics, cross-cultural communications, and Western culture. The faculty is composed of innovative, passionate, and competent teachers.
To cultivate language competent students and facilitate their study in major courses, the Department has designed multi-level and multi-category supporting courses specific to the different majors and courses aiming to prepare students for all-English lesson, such as, General College English and Academic English . The goal is to enable students to communicate in a basic academic setting in English and to help deliver the University’s ambition of building itself into a World-class university. Apart from this, to heighten student’ awareness of cultural exchanges, improve their interpersonal skills as well as their cultural literacy. With the support of the Academic Affairs Office, the Department has established an English Summer Camp during the summer semester that every year offers a cultural feast for students by Chinese teachers and foreign teachers from USA and Canada.
Based on the core concepts of “student-centered” and “quality priority”, the teaching team has carried out a series of creative teaching practices and reforms, including level-based English teaching and computer assisted language teaching. Recently, the department has designed and developed five MOOCs and six SPOCs, that have been implemented as the MOOC-based blended learning model in College English teaching. In this experiment, the Department designed and created their own online MOOC courses—College Experience English and English for General Academic Purposes—based on the traditional in-class course and has witnessed significant learner progress and received positive learner responses.
Other remarkable achievements in teaching reform are the “National College English Reform Demonstration Site”. In 2007, the “Excellent Course in Beijing”, “National Excellence Course” and “Excellent Faculty in Beijing” in 2008, “Excellent Textbook in Beijing (College Experience English Listening and Speaking)” in 2009, “Twelfth-Five Year National Planned Textbook” in 2015, “Beijing Education and Teaching Achievement Award” in 2017 and “national-level MOOC” in 2018. Since 2000, the passing rate of the CET 4 (College English Test Band 4) has been rising steadily, above 90%. The excellence rate of the CET 4 and passing rate of the CET 6 have also steadily increased.
The department has also made significant achievements in research. At present, the faculty is undertaking 6 projects funded by the National Funds of Social Sciences and a number of key projects for pedagogical reform funded by University of Science and Technology Beijing. The faculty has published dozens of research works, textbooks, reference books, and research papers. Meanwhile, the department is broadening its connections and academic exchanges with a number of universities at home and abroad, often inviting famous scholars to give lectures, and encouraging some of its teachers to go abroad for training, lecturing, or attending international conferences.