English Department

The Past and Present

English Department was founded in 1932. English is one of the earliest majors established in Chongqing University. The Department, as an internationalized center for learning, research and academic exchanges, has assumed as its responsibility the teaching and research in such fields as English language, English literature, translation and English culture. Not a few reputed scholars and outstanding alumni have taught and been taught here. It has produced thousands of outstanding graduates. Now the Department offers BA programme for undergraduates and MA programme for postgraduates. The MA programme covers two disciplines, one is Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, the other is English Language and Literature, which mainly concerns language teaching, second language acquisition, language assessment, English for specific purposes, business English, Anglo-American literature, comparative literature, cross-cultural communication and translation.

Description of the English Major

Under the guideline of “solid foundation, various employment, adequate competence, high quality, and international horizon”, the Department aims to educate versatile talents with good command of English linguistic competence, broad cultural knowledge and inter-disciplinary application.

Variety of Courses Offered

Taking the students’ interest, employment possibilities and need of the society into consideration, the Department has designed a syllabus that emphasizes the training of the five basic skills in English learning, namely, Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing and Translating, for the first and the second year undergraduates, and that offers three alternative specialties – Literature, Languag&Culture and Translation – for the third and the fourth year students. The students can select one of the alternatives. The three specialties are designated to cultivate the students’ originality, critical thinking and abilities of social practice, and accordingly improve the students’ humanistic quality.

Employment Prospect

Graduates from the English Department are capable of working in government, joint ventures, research institutes, colleges and universities, large-sized enterprises, and travel agencies. In recent three years, 97.52% of the graduates have found jobs or have gone for further studies.


Academic Exchanges

The Department has invited reputed scholars home and abroad to give lectures and to attend symposiums. Teachers of the Department have had many opportunities to attend international academic conferences, to study in other universities as visiting scholars, and to cooperate with scholars from other universities.

To enable the students to communicate internationally, the Department has established long-term cooperation with universities of the United Kingdom and the United States to offer students opportunities of academic exchanges. The third-year and the fourth-year students have had the opportunity to select the one-year diploma programs in British or American universities.

This Department offers General English for non-English major postgraduate students as part of the requirement for a master’s or doctoral degree. General English is intended to lay emphasis on both linguistic competence and communicative competence, enabling students to communicate in English and become life-long learners of the language. The Department will try its best to satisfy students’ need to use English as a tool to participate in research and academic exchanges in their fields.