The College of Foreign Studies

Introduction

The College of Foreign Studies is one of the youngest of Nanjing Agricultural University’s colleges. It is a pioneer Chinese agricultural institution in setting up a dedicated English major. It was also the first to start teaching Japanese Language and Literature and to offer master’s programs in both English and Japanese Language & Literature and Translation.

The college currently offers four master’s programs:

·         English Language & Literature

·         Japanese Language & Literature

·         Master of Translation and Interpreting (English-Chinese)

·         Master of Translation and Interpreting (Japanese-Chinese)

The college places stress on the theme of “Language and Profession” in order to build versatile, practical skills in students. It also pays a keen interest in enhancing student’s personal development.

Recently, it has also worked hard to intensify its relationships with other institutions of higher education both at home and abroad. For many years, it has been active in inviting prominent scholars to visit in order to give talks. Moreover, every year, teachers and students have the opportunity to train, visit, or work abroad. The English department has cooperative projects with the University of Reading’s Henley Business school and Coventry University’s English Department. The Japanese department has also cooperated in a student exchange scheme for many years with Waseda University, Miyazaki University, Kagoshima Prefectural College, Chiba University, and Daiwa Academy.

Departments and Research Centers

The college contains three departments:

·         English Language and Literature

·         Japanese Language and Literature

·         Foreign Language Teaching

It hosts three research institutes:

·         The English Language and Culture Research Institute

·         The Japanese Language and Culture Research Institute

·         The Language Center for Comparative Studies of Chinese with Foreign Languages

It also hosts two training centers focusing on Japanese and English.

History

The origins of College of Foreign Studies of Nanjing Agricultural University can be traced back to the foreign language teaching group of Nanjing Agricultural College in 1954, when Russian was the only language available. English courses were first offered in 1972, when Nanjing Agricultural College and Yangzhou Agricultural College combined into Jiangsu Agricultural College. In 1979, the College was relocated to Nanjing. It then increased the size of its faculty and office staff, and expanded the languages it offered to include Japanese, French, and Latin, as well as Russian and English. In 1993, the department of foreign languages was founded, with a focus on English and Japanese as the main languages taught.

Teaching Philosophy

The college is constantly pursuing innovation in its teaching. In addition to teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses in English and Japanese, it offers college-level English language provision for non-major students at all levels. The college takes a research-centered approach to the development and improvement of its teaching provision. It has published nearly one hundred CSSCI articles over the past decade.

The college also prides itself on the standard of its teaching, its use of modern technology, and wealth of teaching resources. The college hosts the Foreign Language Teaching Experiment Center, a 7.6 million RMB experimental foreign language teaching center with a total lab space of almost 1.5 thousand square meters. It also owns sixteen modern, multi-media language labs, with a wide range of equipment