School of Foreign Languages

The Department of English was officially established in 1919, but its actual origin goes back to 1862, when Jingshi Tongwenguan, a precursor of Peking University, was first set up by the government of the Qing Dynasty. At the initial stage of the programme, five foreign languages were taught: English, Russian, French, German and Japanese. During the following hundred years, however, the programmes in foreign languages and literatures at PKU attracted a large number of outstanding scholars and students from all over the country. The nation-wide inter-collegiate readjustment in 1952, in particular, greatly strengthened PKU by bringing here many of the best brains in the field of foreign languages and literature in China. In 1999, the university combined the administration of all foreign language departments to form the School of Foreign Languages.

Since its establishment, the Department of English has enjoyed continued prosperity thanks to the unfailing assiduity of its faculty and their deep commitment to the educational traditions of Peking University. Aside from the acquisition of basic language skills, the department attaches great importance to the cultivation of student interest in literature and other cultural forms of British and American origin, and on top of this foundation, a critical perspective on language, literature and culture in general. The Department currently has a faculty of about eighty, offering a variety of courses in reading, listening, literature, culture and translation. Their academic strength is regularly supplemented by visiting professors from English-speaking countries. The Department offers the bachelor's degree in English and the master's and doctoral degrees in the various fields of British and American language, literature, culture and translation.

The Division of College English Teaching and Researching in the English Department has a staff of 46 people, including 4 professors, 16 associate professors, 21 assistant professors and 5 teaching assistants, and the division employs 2-4 native English speakers each year as temporary faculty members to teach oral English.

The division is responsible for the teaching and research of College English, which stands as the biggest and most important course platform in Peking University. With an aim to develop students’ English proficiency in an all round way, the College English Platform embraces a wide variety of English courses, from the ones concerned with the acquisition of basic comprehensive language skills to the ones focused on the achievement of advanced particular language abilities, from the ones oriented toward English literature and linguistics to the ones centered around Western cultures.

The division serves around 5000 students each semester, providing nearly 6500 classroom-teaching hours. In order to tailor our teaching to the needs of students, the division adopts a multilevel teaching system, dividing the students into four levels and setting a group leader to each level to be in charge of detailed teaching affairs. In order to achieve a high standard of English teaching and learning efficiency, the division allocates 30-35 students to each of 150 classes and encourages teachers to diversify teaching methods and activities in 13 newly equipped multimedia classrooms.

The teachers in the division have devoted themselves to their College English teaching and research with a view to building Peking University into a first-class university in the world.