Opening Ceremony of the Summit Forum:Reforming and Developing Foreign Language Education in China

On December 10^th 2016, the Opening Ceremony of the Summit Forum of Reforming and Developing Foreign Language Education in China was held in the library on the North Campus. Professor LIU Jianda, Vice-President of GDUFS, hosted the opening ceremony.

The forum

At the beginning, Professor LIU Jianda gave a general introduction of the guests, including the President of GDUFS, Professor ZHONG Weihe; Vice-Presidents of some famous language universities, such as Helen Kelly Holmes (University of Limerick), SUN Youzhong (BFSU), WANG Junzhe (XISU), WANG Mingyu (TFSU) and Wang Runan (SISU), and representatives of some press and periodicals of foreign education and other experts and scholars from all over the country.

Then President ZHONG was introduced to deliver a welcoming speech and a keynote speech.

President ZHONG delivered a speech

Firstly, President ZHONG expressed his heartfelt thankfulness to all the attendees and colleagues organizing the meeting. Then he introduced the background of the meeting. He said that the reason the meeting was held at GDUFS was that GDUFS gained social science funds used to support the project - reforming and developing foreign language education in China - in 2015, and wisdoms and support needed to be collected to complete the project remarkably. He hoped that the meeting could be fruitful and had its part to play in supporting foreign language education in China.

After the concise welcome speech, in order to save more time for the discussion, President ZHONG went directly to the keynote speech with the theme “Reforming and Developing Foreign Language Education in China From the perspective of national strategy.” In this section, President ZHONG introduced the achievements of foreign language education in China. He showed that foreign language learners in China are about 300 million and over 70 kinds of foreign languages have been studied in China. What’s more, some foreign language universities have formed their running characteristics, serving as major sources of internationalized talents.

“The program‘One Belt One Road’ would not be smooth with if language barriers exist”, said ZHONG, indicating that foreign language education is an essential and organic part of national strategy. In the new era of spreading Chinese culture to the world and carrying out the One Belt One Road Strategy, he called for attendees’ attention and solutions to the problems, such as the absence of specific institutions for planning and regulating the foreign language education of different levels and the lagging development of non-common foreign languages, to make foreign language education fully serve national dethevelopment.

Professor SUN delivered a speech

At about 10 a.m., the opening ceremony ended with the next keynote speech given by Professor SUN Youzhong. Although some attendees didn’t get seats, they were well engaged in the efficient and pragmatic meeting.