Approach in A People-Oriented  and Diversifying Way
By Audrey Guo — Exclusive Interview with Professor Wu Guangjun, Dean of SELLC, BISU
T his autumn fruitful autumn, Beijing International Studies University (BISU) is about to celebrate the 54th anniversary since its founda-tion. Meanwhile, the Department of English established in 1964 turned into the School of English Language, Literature and Culture (SELLC) in 2009. Are there any moving stories behind these name-changes, and did the teaching philosophy change according-ly ? With these questions, China’s Foreign
Trade
came into the office of Professor Wu Guangjun, Dean of the SELLC, when he concluded a meeting o
n undergraduate teach-ing evaluation. Despite his busy management work, he still insists on teaching and publish-ing at least one article in an international jour-nal every year. When he sat down and spoke of history, he drew the attention of our report-er with the first sentence, “It was rare for the foundation of BISU, and rare in the history of colleges and universities in China.”
Founded under the support of late
premier Zhou, BISU created a new
foreign language teaching method
Wu Guangjun told us the story: “Early in
1964 when Premier Zhou Enlai was visiting 14
countries in Asia, Africa and Europe, he found
that there was an increasing gap between de-
mand for professionals due to frequent foreign
affairs and supply from colleges. Under the
cordial care of Premier Zhou, BISU was found-
ed on October 24, 1964. From preparation to
launching the operation, it only took half a
year, which is rare in the history of colleges and
universities in China.”
At the inaugural ceremony of BISU, then
vice premier Chen Yi attended and delivered
a speech, which became the guiding ideology
for BISU to carry out educational and teaching
reform. Chen said, “start with listening and
speaking, followed by reading and writing,
then simultaneously developing five skills,
to realize comprehensive development.” Wu
Guangjun continued to explain that this was
an innovative teaching idea at the time, leading
to BISU attracting a great number of foreign
language teachers from colleges and universities
to learn about this educational model. “At that
time, many well-known translators came out of
BISU, including Dong Leshan who translated
Rise and Fall of the Third Reich into Chinese,
Zhou Xiqing who took part in the Tokyo Trials
as a translator, and Wang Wenjiong, a senior
translator. They all demonstrated that idea,”
Wu said proudly.
Since 2003, when he came to the Depart-
ment of English, Wu Guangjun gradually rose
to dean from starting off as an ordinary college
teacher, and he has witnessed the development
of SELLC over these years. SELLC has main-
tained a high graduate employment rate of over
96% for a long time, with this rate up to 99% in
2017. On top of that, about 30% of graduates
go abroad for further study.
It is learned that SELLC has two special-
ties: English and Business English, consisting
of four departments — the Department of
English Language and Literature, the De-
partment of Intercultural Communication, the
Department of Translation, and the Depart-
ment of English for Specific Purposes. Besides,
SELLC offers both BA and MA programs.
According to Wu Guangjun, SELLC takes
in over 200 undergraduates and 50 or so post-
graduate students each year, and at the moment
there are more than 900 undergraduates and
about 160 postgraduate students at SELLC.
Wu said, during the 13th Five-Year Plan peri-
SELLC has maintained a
high graduate employment
rate of over 96% for long,
with the rate up to 99% in
2017.
od, that the BA programs of SELLC will have
an overall layout of one body and two wings:
SELLC is an integrated body, with the two
specialties of English and Business English as
the two wings, which are both common and
different at the same time.
“The discipline of English is the leading
foreign language at BISU, with the longest
history, and the strongest teaching and research
strengths. It is also recognized as the munic-
ipality-level key discipline in Beijing,” Wu
Guangjun said. “We are targeting cultivating
international, compound and high-level En-
glish professionals, and educating students with
solid knowledge and capabilities in the English
language, familiarity with China’s national
conditions and culture, and full understanding
of the history, culture, politics, and economies
of the English-speaking countries, as well as
international law. In May 2017, at the pilot
evaluation briefing meeting for undergraduate
programs of Beijing municipal colleges and
universities, the major of English at SELLC
ranked first among the 14 municipal colleges
and universities participating in the evaluation,
showing an obvious advantage.”
Business English is a new discipline es-
tablished under the approval of the Ministry of
Education in 2010, mainly aiming at meeting
the rapidly increasing demand for high-quality
cooperativeBusiness English professionals. Wu Guangjun
said that the program for this discipline highlights
the education of compound talents feature in
“English language skills + business knowledge +
cross-cultural communication capabilities”. By focusing on combining solid English skills with professional business knowledge and cross-cultural business communication abilities, while making use of high-quality educational resources in international trade and economy, management and finan
ce, this discipline is ap-plication-oriented to develop Business English professionals who have innovative spirits and international perspectives, and are able to adapt to the needs of society in the 21st century.
People-oriented, educating diversified English talents
As to talent cultivation, Wu Guangjun said it is always the top priority of SELLC, and also a top concern when developing policies, to make sure programs are “people-oriented”.“Traditionally, programs for English ma-jor students focus on language and literature skills, but this model can no longer adapt to the needs of the society. Entering this new century, we have to develop new models to train English talent, to meet the changing requirements. At the same time, there are problems. The language level and accuracy of graduates has declined,” Wu said. The reasons pushing the changes in training models, Wu pointed out, includes China’s going-out strategy and the implementation of the Belt and Road Initiative, so China’s English speakers need to diversify increasingly more, the main problem between
teaching and talent cultivating.“In combination with the reform of the school, we vigorously promote and imple-ment the top-level design for undergraduate cultivating system. In 2015, the Department of Applied English became the Department of English for Specific Purposes, to specially align programs for Business English graduates. Meanwhile, we developed the Department of Intercultural Communication, to strengthen the disciplinarily for English talents training under the new situation,” Wu said.The concept of “diversified talent training” is popular now, and BISU is working on it. Wu Guangjun believes that “talent cultivation is a long run, and we may not see results in a short period. So, we needn’t to be anxious. We can-not clearly see the effects of changing training models in five or even ten years”.SELLC mainly implements the diversifi-cation partly through the programs of SELLC and intra-college cooperative projects with other universities offering English programs, and p
artly through the “English + Professional” model and international cooperation (overseas cooperative projects). Besides, SELLC is select-ing English talent to form a pilot class in hopes of promoting Chinese culture, while trying to explore structures and practices of the diversi-fied English professional training model.In detail Wu Guangjun explained, En-glish-major undergraduate students of the third year choose a direction among language and literature, translation, and cross-culture, thus taking place of “tool theory” by “value theory”. “In 2015, we formed a pilot class to promote Chinese culture around the world, to transform the situation of more bringing-ins of foreign cultures and less Chinese cultural output. We hope to improve the cultural output. Every year, this pilot class recruits 15 students at school with the highest scores, and teaches classic Chinese culture,” Wu told reporters. “Although the reform process is always full of difficulties, we have made a breakthrough with combining excellent professors and outstanding students. In addition, English majors enrolled in 2016 and beyond must choose at least four credits in other disciplines related to English. Students can gain a second academic degree if they are able to earn 52 credits from the second discipline.”“Since 2016, we have been participating in the intra-college cooperative projects in Bei-jing, namely the “3 + 1” cooperative cultivating projects with colleges and universities under ministries and commissions of the central gov-ernment. Now we are cooperating with the School of Journalism, Communication Univer-sity of China (CUC), meaning in the first three
E DUCATION & CULTURE
years students from SELLC will attend classes together with students at CUC, and come back in the fourth year to complete their thesis. In 2017, we reached a cooperation agreement with Beijing Normal University (BNU) for English education majors, with SELLC sending 6 stu-dents each year to BNU. The score required for this project is much higher than that for English majors. Moreover, students are fonder of this project,” Wu said.There are overseas cooperative projects, too. BISU, jointly with CAPITAL, constructed “Châteauroux Campus” at a site 200 kilome-ters away from Paris, France, and carries out three-party cooperation there with the Univer-sity of Orleans in France. Wu Guangjun said, “Since 2016, we have been sending 13 or 14 students each year, and offered them strong sup-port. Some students are totally free of tuition fees and some are 50% exempted. Instead of bringing in educational resources, we are now setting up universities in foreign countries. Going abroad, this is also a bold attempt.” According to Wu, BISU now has cooperation agreements with more than 150 overseas universities, including the University of Queensland and Griffith Uni-versity in Australia, and the University of Arizo-na and the University of California at Berkeley in USA, giving students more choices. In 2016, BISU reached agreements with US Binghamton University to jointly offer doctoral programs for translators.“We develop diversified choices for stu-dents at BISU. They ar
e not stuck in language skills or literature knowledge, but be opened up with space of choices. We won a second prize of Beijing Higher Education Teaching Achievement Award 2017 for the ‘Structure and Practice for Diversified Training Model of English Majors’, which is an honor for us, since the competition was fierce, as all colleges and universities in Beijing are involved,” Wu Guangjun said with a smile.Cross-cultural communication cannot be superficial While providing students with a diver-sified cultivating model, according to Wu Guangjun, SELLC strongly advocates the teaching style of “interact with students to make thinking easier, and teach with suitable ideas and skills” and the learning style of “in-tegrating home and foreign knowledge, and achieve the unity of knowing and doing”, in order to offer education in the spirit of human-ities education.In the last four years, students from BISU won various prizes in kinds of professional competitions such as the “FLTRP Cup Na-tional English Debate Competition for College Students, FLTRP Cup National English De-bate Elite Competition for College students, FLTRP Cup Writing Competition, FLTRP Cup National Business English Practice Con-test”, including National First Prize and Best Debater, as well as 11 other provincial and ministerial and national awards.Wu Guangjun has been engaged in cross-cultural translation for many years, so he deeply understands that the education of En-glish is not only about language skills, but also about an education of humanities and general knowledge. The more you learn, the more you find yourself ignorant. Therefore, you have to keep working hard. Especially as
more and more Chinese are going out, how to let foreign-ers better understand Chinese culture and these new words coming out from the transforming process of China, all these boost foreign lan-guage learners to continue study, especially learning and understanding the culture behind a certain language. He believes that “intercul-tural communication cannot be superficial, but needs at least 20 years of in-depth experience to learn the thinking habits. Therefore, language learners should master functions behind the forms, and guild regulations in industries such as business and politics”. Wishes from the Dean In an era of globalization for promoting Chinese culture, English has increasingly become the bridge and bond of human communication as a common language worldwide. Nowadays, high-end talents who have a dept at English language,
boast solid foundation of English capabilities and
a thorough understanding of Chinese culture and other countries’ culture, economy and politics, are sought-after in the current times.

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