The School of Foreign Languages (SFL) of Ludong University was founded as the English Faculty in 1963, renamed English Department in 1971, Department of Foreign Languages in 1994 and attained the present name in March 2002.
SFL presently has a teaching staff of 146 members, including 7 professors and 38 assistant professors, 33 of whom have Doctoral Degrees. The school has one chief expert of key disciplines in universities in Shandong Province, one chief expert of the Innovation Team of “Science and Technology Innovation Plan for The Youth” in universities in Shandong Province and four members of the college-level young and middle-aged academic backbone leaders; it has 8 foreign teachers and 2 business professors. The school now has an enrollment of 2034 students, of whom 1805 are full-time undergraduates and 212 are postgraduates.
SFL presently has seven departments: English Department, Business English Department, Japanese Department, Korean Department, French Department, College English Department and Department of Public English for Graduates. The school has the authority to confer master’s degrees in the first-level discipline of Foreign Languages and Literature, which comprises of 3 second-level academic degrees of English Language and Literature, Japanese Language and Literature, and Korean Language and Literature; 2 professional degrees: Master of Translation (English/Japanese) and Subject Teaching of English. It offers BA programs in English, Business English, Japanese, Korean and French. The school takes on the teaching duties for undergraduates, postgraduates, and double majors in the university. The English major of SFL is rated as a brand major of Shandong Province. It is awarded as a first-class undergraduate major in Shandong Province and in China. English Language and Literature is one of the key disciplines in Shandong Province during the 11th Five-Year Plan Period and a special key discipline provincially during the 12th Five-Year Plan Period.
SFL has excellent teaching conditions, modern facilities such as advanced language labs, audio-visual labs, simultaneous interpretation labs and multi-media classrooms (for microteaching, BEU, freight forwarding, etc.) and a rich collection of books and audio-visual materials. The school has built a state-level demonstration center for experimental teaching. The “Applied Foreign Language Talents Training Base” in SFL has been appointed as a Humanistic Science Research Base of Shandong Province. The school has a research center to study the cooperation between Shandong Province and France. Many courses of SLF have been identified as excellent courses (such as Introduction to European Culture, Selected readings of English Newspapers and Journals) and first-class courses (such as Advanced English, Translation and Practice) of Shandong Province.
SFL has actively carried out international exchanges and cooperation, and has established joint training and exchange programs for undergraduates and masters with more than 10 universities in the United States, Britain, France, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand and other countries. Recently, the school has sponsored “The 12th National Symposium on Translation of Classical Books”, and hosted the “Belt and Road and Sino-Foreign Cultural Exchange Academic Seminar”, “The Seminar on the Communication of Traditional Chinese Culture in the Korean Peninsula under the Background of the Belt and Road”, and other academic conferences, which have had a wide impact in the academic world.
SFL has made remarkable achievements in promoting teaching by scientific research, serving the major national strategies and regional economic and social development. Its scientific research strength ranks top among universities in Shandong Province. By now, the school faculty has been hosting 18 research projects supported by the National Social Science Fund, and over 60 projects of Shandong provincial social science programming. More than 80 articles have been published on CSSCI periodicals, in addition to 90 academic books. The aforementioned publications have won 2 second and 6 third prizes of provincial Social Science Excellence Award and 13 prizes of Shandong High School Excellence Award.
Adhering to the principle of “promoting learning through competition, promoting teaching through competition and promoting capacity through competition”, SFL takes the reform and development of education as the main line, the moral curriculum as the guide, and the training and competition as the starting point to comprehensively improve the teaching ability and teaching proficiency of all the staff. In recent years, nine teachers have won awards in national teaching competitions and 11 in provincial teaching competitions. Among them, our teachers won the first prize in the “Teaching Star” national finals held by FLTRP in 2019, the provincial first prize in the 6th Shandong Province Young College Teachers’ Teaching Competition, and the first prize in the National Finals of the SFLEP National Foreign Language Teaching Contest.
SFL now has 191 party members, including 69 faculty members and 122 student members. It has 7 party branches, including 2 staff branches and 5 student branches. Now, SFL is fully implementing the Party's educational policy, adhering to the socialist orientation in school running, fulfilling the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education, and training socialist builders and successors who are well-developed in morals, intelligence, physical fitness, aesthetics, and work. The school is striving to contribute to the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
