The School of Foreign Studies (SFS) was established in 2005, evolving from the Department of Foreign Languages of Jiangnan University. Its predecessors were a gradual amalgamation of the foreign language departments of Wuxi University of Light Industry, Jiangnan College, Wuxi Educational College and Donghua University (Wuxi). Currently, SFS has a total staff of 126, including 110 full-time teachers, with 15 professors, 26 associate professors, and 33 PhD holders. Over 60 teachers from SFS have been sent to the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada, Japan, Germany, and other countries for further studies or academic visits. SFS has one full-time foreign teacher and perennially hires 6-10 foreign teachers. SFS has also invited over 10 experts from home and abroad as guest professors.
SFS offers promising students from all over the world the chance to pursue BA degree studies in
• English
• Japanese
or MA research degree studies in English Language and Literature in the following research areas
• applied linguistics
• British and American Literature
• Translation Theory and Practice.
SFS’s curricula are underpinned by the principle “quality and excellence” and this is reflected in the outstanding undergraduate results for English (TEM-4/8) and Japanese (JLPT N5-N1) majors.
Presently, SFS comprises four teaching units: the Department of English, the Department of Japanese, the Department of Essential College English, and the Department of College English Enrichment. With the support of the Digital Foreign Language Laboratory, which serves as the experimental teaching demonstration center for higher education institutions in Jiangsu Province, SFS is constantly improving the teaching environment, innovating teaching methods, and enhancing teaching quality. The collaborative efforts of six innovative teaching and research teams, namely the Literary Interdisciplinary Research Team, the Foreign Language Teaching Fundamentals Research Team, the Political and Academic Discourse Translation Research Team, the Language Cognition and Society Research Team, the Confucian Classics Translation Team, and the Language Education Chinese-Japanese Research Team, have collectively propelled teaching and research forward.
SFS offers a master program in English Language and Literature and two bachelor programs in English and Japanese to about 1,000 graduate and undergraduate students. The English major aims to cultivate advanced professionals with comprehensive qualities, broad international perspectives, and solid expertise and interdisciplinary capabilities. The Japanese major relies on Wuxi’s strong economic development momentum and the advantages of its regional culture as a Japanese investment hub. With the principles of “solid foundation, cross-cultural competence, emphasis on practice, and pursuit of innovation,” it provides solid academic support and practical platforms for students to cultivate international perspectives and embark on international careers. The master’s program follows the guidelines of “ensuring quality and pursuing excellence” and has established a comprehensive curriculum system and a well-functioning mechanism for master students, thus obtaining fruitful research achievements. In recent years, two outstanding master’s theses have been awarded the Jiangsu Province Excellent Academic Master’s Thesis; several students have received innovation projects at the provincial level; many students have won first and second prizes for excellent achievements in academic forums at the provincial level. The rate of our students’ doctoral enrollment is increasing year by year. In the list of national and provincial first-class undergraduate programs announced by China’s Ministry of Education in 2021, the English and Japanese majors of our school were recognized as national and provincial first-class undergraduate program construction sites respectively.
Supported by strong teaching and research achievements, “College English” was awarded the provincial Excellent College Course in 2008 and upgraded to a national Excellent College Course in 2010. In 2011, SFS was approved as one of the Third Batch of College English Teaching Reform and Demonstration Sites by the Ministry of Education of China and honored with the second prize of Jiangsu Higher Education Award for Teaching Achievements. In 2015, the important project of teaching reform in higher education institutions in Jiangsu Province, “Collaborative Innovation Research on the Construction of English Resources and Teaching Models in the Digital Environment” was endorsed by the expert group. In the past five years, more than 50 monographs and textbooks, and over 300 papers have been published. SFS has undertaken more than 30 scientific research and teaching reform projects at national, provincial, and ministerial levels, as well as more than 40 university-level projects. SFS has won over 20 awards, including the Excellent Achievements in Scientific Research in Higher Education, Excellent Achievements of Philosophy and Social Sciences in Jiangsu Province, and Excellent Achievements of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the municipal level.
SFS attaches great importance to all-round student development and organizes a series of extracurricular activities such as English Corner, Japanese Garden, English Composition Competition and Foreign Song Contest. Students have won numerous prizes in the “FLTRP Cup” National English Speaking Contest, “FLTRP Cup” National English Debating Competition, “National English Contest for College Students”, “China Cup” National and East China Region Japanese Speaking Contest, “Asahi Cup” Jiangsu Provincial Japanese Speaking Contest, “Sunyu Cup” Jiangsu Provincial Japanese Translation Contest, “Casio Cup” Jiangsu Higher Education Institution Japanese Dubbing Competition and other provincial and municipal competitions.
SFS vigorously promotes academic exchanges with higher learning institutions at home and abroad and invites nationally and internationally renowned experts and scholars to give lectures and advice. In recent years, it has organized many regional and national academic conferences and delegated around 30 teachers every year to participate in national and international conferences.
SFS is now a testing center for the Business English Certificate (BEC), and the Japanese Language Proficiency Test (JLPT), which are internationally recognized examinations, and for the Shanghai Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters.
