The School of Foreign Languages (SFL) at Fuzhou University (FZU) was founded in 1978. At present, the school has a teaching faculty and administrative staff of 148, including a team consisting of 4 professors and 44 associate professors. Among the teaching faculty, there are 25 PhDs and PhD candidates.
The school comprises the following departments: Department of English, Department of Japanese, Department of German, College English Teaching Center and Teaching Center for Graduate Studies. The school also houses the Center for Intercultural Discourse Studies (the Provincial Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences)，and Cambridge Business English (BEC) Test Center.
Based on the master program of the first-level discipline in Foreign Languages and Literature, the school offers three master programs of the second-level disciplines, which cover English Language and Literature, Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, and Japanese Language and Literature. Also offered is the Master of Translation and Interpreting (MTI) Program.
SFL has developed its distinctive academic features in the fields of cross-cultural discourse studies, stylistics, translation studies, and applied linguistics. In recent years the school is undertaking numerous projects, such as, 2 research projects funded by the National Social Sciences Foundation, 2 projects funded by the Ministry of Education, 8 projects funded by Fujian Social Sciences Foundation, 24 projects funded by Fujian Provincial Department of Education, and 33 teaching research projects funded by other organizations.
The school is committed to developing a well-balanced, driven, and dedicated faculty, offering three high-quality provincial courses: Intensive Reading for English Majors, Translation and Interpretation for English Majors, and College English for non-English Majors. It has also formed a provincial teaching team (College English). To the schools credit, two professors won the FZU Outstanding Educator Award. Also, in 2012, SFL’s MA Program of Foreign Languages and Literatures ranked 21st out of a total of 61 similar programs in the National MA Programs Review conducted by China’s Ministry of Education.
Embracing globalization in education, SFL collaborates with universities in the UK, the US, Australia, and Japan for academic cooperation and exchange, organizes academic conferences, and invites distinguished scholars from home and abroad to give lectures. The school hosted the scholarly conferences on “Traditions and Reality: Contemporary Chinese and Foreign Translation Theories and Pragmatic Studies” in 2014 and “Intercultural Discourses and Social Transformation” in 2015, which attracted a large number of domestic and international scholars. SFL’s 8 research teams conduct seminars on a regular basis, where teachers meet, discuss, and share their research findings. Meanwhile, SFL mobilizes a high quality teaching team to carry out reforms of college English placement teaching, offering an ever greater variety of content-based English courses and general education courses. The school also offers courses to international students. Today SFL has built a new model of humanistic and holistic education, offering a culturally diverse curriculum for the entire university. With foreign and native language competency and a thorough understanding of foreign and Chinese cultures, students in SFL have not only won many awards in national contests in translation, interpreting, English speech-making and composition writing but have also been better prepared for the globalized world.
As an integral part of Fuzhou University, one of the leading universities selected into “Project 211”, SFL aspires to highlight its teaching and research advantages. The school will continue to explore innovative approaches to foster talent and cultivate foreign language professionals of a high caliber for the economic, cultural, and social development of Fujian Province.
