On the afternoon of April 10th, 2025, Professor Wang Wenbin from Beijing Foreign Studies University visited the School of Foreign Studies (SFS) at Nankai University, delivering an insightful lecture titled “The Effect of Perspective-Based Semantic Construction” to faculty and students. The lecture was chaired by Professor Zhang Wenzhong, Director of the Foreign Language Education and Teacher Development Research Center. Over thirty faculty members, visiting scholars, doctoral and master’s students from the Departments of English, Japanese, French, German, Arabic, Translation, and the Department of Foreign Languages for Non-Majors attended the lecture.
In the lecture, Professor Wang Wenbin emphasized that, amidst the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence technology, foreign language professionals need to have an imaginative and sensitive perspective with flexible thinking, and cultivate compound abilities beyond a single knowledge dimension to cope with the changes of the intelligent era. At the same time, centered on the concept of “perspectivization,” Professor Wang illustrated the multiple possibilities of language and thought for teachers and students of SFS through vivid examples. These included multi-dimensional translation cases, multi-perspective games involving telecom operator advertising language, and logical differences in mathematical algorithms between China and India. He urged scholars to break free from rigid theoretical formulas and to activate academic imagination and divergent thinking through deep, systematic research. Regarding talent cultivation, Professor Wang advocates that foreign language educators draw from his own educational experience and nurture students’ divergent thinking to meet the needs of multi-context language application scenarios. The content of the lecture is both forward-looking and instructive, providing profound academic inspiration to faculty and students of SFS while effectively broadening their multi-dimensional research perspectives.
In the interactive questioning session, teachers and students actively asked questions related to the lecture content. Professor Wang Wenbin addressed the main points of the questions in turn, fostering a lively and interactive atmosphere. Attendees unanimously agreed that they had gained valuable insights and benefited greatly from the session.
Wang Wenbin is professor and doctoral supervisor of National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education of Beijing Foreign Studies University, a key research base of humanities and social sciences of the Ministry of Education. He serves as the Deputy Director of the English Teaching Guidance Committee of the Ministry of Education, Vice President of the China Association for Comparative Studies of English and Chinese, Honorary President of the Foreign Language Education Technology Committee of the China Association for Comparative Studies of English and Chinese, President of the Foreign Language Education Professional Committee, and Vice President of the Cognitive Linguistics Professional Committee. He is also the Chief Expert of the “Foreign Language Education” discipline, a high-precision and advanced disciplines in Beijing universities, and a recipient of the State Council special allowance.
