On November 23, Professor Ning Qi-Dean of College of Foreign Language of Peking University paid a visit to NKU and delivered a lecture titled “The Reform Direction and Ways of Discipline Construction and talents cultivation of Foreign Language Colleges in Comprehensive Universities” in Liangzheng Hall. Hosted by Professor Yan Guodong, the cadres and the teachers from all departments and centers participated in the lecture.
From the perspective of constructing the first class university and discipline, Professor Ning introduced the achievement of the foreign language discipline of Peking University in its mission, positioning, major structure, talents cultivation, the construction of think tanks. She believed that the achievement mainly depended on the open and inclusive academic traditions of Peking University, because foreign language was regarded as an important part of humanities and foreign language with foreign history and foreign philosophy which together are majors of foreign studies had formed a pattern of correlation and dependence of each other in research fields and this had helped foreign language to get broad development space and continuous vitality. She also introduced that the majors of 20 foreign languages were open to applicants and more than 30 public foreign language courses had been opened for students including public English with more than 3000 student taking these courses, which had contributed a lot to the international cooperation and the cultivation of internationalized talents of Peking University. Besides, Professor Ning had her unique understanding on the challenges and opportunities which comprehensive universities faced in the cultivation of foreign language talents who can meet the needs of our time.
Many present teachers and cadres agreed with Professor Ning and they had a warm discussion with her according to the situation of CFL of NKU. Professor Ning’s lecture and her exchanges with the teachers from our college will broaden our view, inspire our ideas and motivate our action in our discipline construction.
Speaking of “the motivation of the great discussion about the strategies of the first class discipline construction of the College of Foreign Language in comprehensive universities ”, Professor Yan said that both Peking University and Nankai University were famous comprehensive universities in China, and they had deep and profound academic relation because the Colleges of Foreign Language from two universities ever formed the College of Foreign Language of National Southwestern Associated University with Tsinghua University in 1937, so there was something common in the development history, talents cultivation concepts and academic pursuit of the foreign language discipline between our two universities. And the deep exchange with the College of Foreign Language of Peking University would be a good start for the great discussion.
Professor Yan concluded that President Xi pointed out in the report of the 19th CPC National Congress that we should walk closer to the center of the world stage and make more contribution to the development of human beings in new time, so we should quicken the construction of first class universities and first class disciplines and realize the connotative development of the advanced education. And as for how to make the cultivation of talents of foreign languages meet the needs of the new time and how to make the construction of the foreign language discipline meet the needs of the construction of first class universities, they both need thinking and solving. Owing to its academic traditions of tolerance and inclusiveness and its positioning to regard foreign language discipline as an important part of humanities and social science, Peking University had gained an important status and much importance in its linguistics, literature and regional and country-specific studies. And 20 majors for applicants and the teaching practice of about 30 minority languages had provided support for the cultivation of the internationalized talents for Peking University. Aimed at the construction of first class discipline, the College of Foreign Language of NKU had gained achievement in its talents cultivation, the improvement of the major structure, continuant teaching reform and the innovation of the management of scientific research mechanism. And the face-to-face and deep exchanges between two foreign language colleges about the foreign language construction in comprehensive universities were very timely and beneficial.
