Discription of the English Major

1. Pedagogical Features

The SFL boasts three main pedagogical features as follows.

First, there are orientations of two foreign languages. The school has established English-French, English-Portuguese and Japanese-English orientations to train professionals with good linguistic competence in two foreign languages.

Second, there is a double-major program. In September, 2010, the SFL and the School of Chinese established a collaborative program of English-TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) as a double major to train more competitive professionals for the job market. In the future, the school will cooperate with other schools of the university to launch more double-major programs.

The third feature is the training of interdisciplinary professionals. The school encourages its students to learn another specialty as their second major or learn minor courses of another major, so that they will be proficient in one or two foreign languages and good at another major/skill. Take the graduates of 2011 for examples. About 16% of them obtained a second degree or learned minor courses of another major in Law, Finance, Business Management, and so on.

2. English Major：3 orientations

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* English-French Orientation

Objectives: To let students receive sound training of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translating in both English and French. In addition to a good mastery of both languages, students will acquaint themselves with the culture, economy, politics and social affairs in Britain, America, France and other European countries.

Future Career Placement: governmental organs, enterprises, companies, or other organizations concerning foreign affairs, translation, trade, culture, journalism, education, tourism, etc.

* English-Portuguese Orientation

Objectives: To let students receive sound training of listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating in both English and Portuguese. In addition to a good mastery of both languages, students will acquaint themselves with the culture, economy, politics and social affairs in Britain, America, Portugal and other European countries.

Future Career Placement: governmental organs, enterprises, companies, or other organizations concerning foreign affairs, translation, trade, culture, journalism, education, tourism, etc.
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* Orientation of English Language & Literature

Objectives: To let students receive sound training of listening, speaking, reading, and translating in English, have some knowledge of trade, and arm themselves with basic scientific research ability and basic capacity for their further pursuit of postgraduate studies or for managerial and/or translating responsibilities in the fields of foreign affairs, economy, etc.

Future Career Placement: governmental organs, enterprises, companies, or other organizations concerning foreign affairs, translation, trade, culture, journalism, education, tourism, etc.

3. Description of Major-related Core Courses

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Intensive English Reading and Writing: This course is designed to help the students to improve their general language proficiency through exercises in text comprehension and appreciation and improve their integrated language skills through various class activities and to consolidate their knowledge in the usage of key words, idiomatic expressions, sentence structures, collocations and other grammar items, especially to use language accurately and appropriately in writing;
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English for Communication: This course is designed to help the students to communicate effectively, to speak clearly (pronunciation), add to their vocabulary, and fix grammar mistakes, and to improve their command of the language through practice.
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English Phonetics and Phonology: This course is designed to help the students to understand the theories of phonetics and phonology, to learn the techniques and rules of proper pronunciation, to use word stress and sentence stress, to master the rules and principles of intonations, and to analyze speech materials and improve their oral English.
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News and Current Events: This course is designed to help students to get acquainted with English news and current events by listening to the English programs of those major media in the English-speaking countries, thus improving their listening skill.
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Literature and Culture: This course is designed to help students to get some basic knowledge about the literature and culture of the English-speaking countries by listening to selected English materials and by watching selected videos.
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Appraisal Reading of Literature: This course is designed to help the students to improve their English reading skills by reading contemporary English literary works, and to foster their critical thinking and skills of examining linguistic phenomena, such as hypothesis, analysis, inference, deduction and induction.
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English Writing: This course is designed to help the students to understand the differences between Chinese and English and improve their skills in English writing, to grasp the overall structure of English writing on the basis of using proper words, making effective sentences, writing different genres of English essays, and to learn the right ways of research and thesis writing.
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Advanced English: This course is designed to help the students to further improve their reading skills as an advanced learner, and to appreciate the beauty of and enhance their sensitivity to the English language.
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History and Culture of English Speaking Countries: This course is designed to help the students to know some basics about major English-speaking countries in terms of their history and culture.
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English Interpreting: This course is designed to help the students to understand the theories underlying the principles and practice of interpreting, to learn the techniques and skills of interpreting, and to be capable of interpreting materials of various subject matters from English to Chinese and vice versa.
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English Linguistics: This course is designed to help the students to understand basic principles of linguistics, to be able to use and understand introductory linguistic terminology, to be capable of putting this knowledge to use in analyzing linguistic data from a variety of languages and also in forming hypotheses, and to enable students to use their linguistic knowledge to improve their own language learning and teaching.
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Second Language Acquisition: This course is designed to help the students to understand the theories, methods, and findings in the field of SLA, and to guide them to read SLA research journals and explore SLA topic areas.
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Semantics and Pragmatics: This course is designed to help the students to understand the basic concepts and theories of semantics and pragmatics, to learn the techniques and skills of analyzing the meaning and usage of language, and to be capable of explaining language phenomena and solving language problems.