On September 8, the 2017 Cross-Straits Foreign Language Teaching Seminar was held in Conference Room 500 of the Foreign Language Building in Jilin University. This seminar was sponsored by College of Foreign Languages of Jilin University, Northeast Asian International Language and Culture Research Base, Northeast Asian International Language and Culture Research Center. Advisory Committee of Foreign Language Teaching in Higher Institution under Ministry of Education, China Japanese Education Association, Jilin Province Tumen River International Cooperation Institute and Kyushu Institute of Foreign Languages co-organized this seminar. Present here were experts and scholars from more than 30 colleges and universities across the straits, including National Taiwan University, National Chengchi University, Providence University, Tamkang University, Soochow University, National Taichung University of Science and Technology, Shanghai International Studies University, Renmin University of China, Harbin Institute of Technology, Dalian University of Technology, East China Normal University and Northeast Normal University. Professor Zhou Yifu, dean of College of Foreign Languages, hosted the seminar. Professor Zheng Weitao, vice-president of Jilin University and Professor Yu Naiming, dean of the National Chengchi University and other experts and scholars cross-straits attended the opening ceremony.
After the opening ceremony, Professor Yu Naiming delivered a keynote address about the changes in foreign language teaching and the building of multiple learning environment – focusing on National Chengchi University. She introduced in details the curriculum, teaching characteristics and changes, faculty building, teacher performance evaluation mechanism and internationalization strategy in National Chengchi University. This seminar had branch meetings for the other language departments: English, Japanese, Russian, Korean and Spanish. During the seminar, they discussed problems warmly and deeply, such as the study of training students with linguistic skills, the study of curriculum design, the reform of foreign language teaching methods and the development and evaluation of foreign-language textbooks.
Professor Hu Jianjun, vice dean of College of Foreign Languages, hosted the closing ceremony. Professor Yu and Professor Zhou made speeches respectively. Professor Zhou mentioned that this seminar analyzed the situation of foreign-language education reform and helped teachers explor about how to improve teaching quality and train students. At the end of the speech, Professor Zhou extended his thanks again to other scholars' coming and hoped that the discussion could be continued, new ways would be found for educational innovation and reform and finally foster more society-adapting students.
The 2017 Cross-straits Seminar on Foreign Language Teaching not only provided a learning platform for experts and scholars across the strait to communicate with each other and deepen their friendship, but also promoted the integration and communications between the two regions. Also, it provided new ideas of pushing forward the educational reform and development in the foreign-language teaching.
