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The School of Foreign Languages traces its origins to the Department of Foreign Languages of Xinlian College of Henan Normal University, established in 2003. It was officially founded as the School of Foreign Languages in 2011 and renamed the School of Foreign Languages of Zhongyuan Institute of Science and Technology (ZIST) in February 2021 following institutional restructuring. In 2022, the university adjusted the disciplinary and professional layout, integrating the former Public Foreign Languages Teaching and Research Section into the School. As a key secondary teaching unit of the university, the School shoulders the dual mission of cultivating applied foreign language professionals and delivering public foreign language education across the institution. Upholding the motto “Virtue and Conduct First, Mastery in Language and Teaching; Blossoming in Knowledge, Bridging China and the World,” the School has honed its distinctive features of “multilingual proficiency, strong practical application, and international orientation.” It has established a multilingual teaching system covering English, Japanese, Spanish, German, and other languages, fostered a collaborative education mechanism through deep industry-academia integration, and promoted international exchanges, further studies, and employment via partnerships with prestigious overseas institutions. The School is committed to nurturing multilingual and interdisciplinary foreign language talents with solid linguistic foundations, cross-cultural competence, and the ability to excel in teaching or cross-border digital trade.
The School currently offers six undergraduate programs—English, Business English, Japanese, Spanish, German, and Portuguese—as well as two vocational college programs: Primary English Education and Business English. The English Major has been recognized as a Provincial First-Class Undergraduate Program and a Brand Program of Private Higher Education Institutions in Henan Province. The Business English Major has received funding under the Henan Provincial Support Project of Discipline and Specialty Development, and the English Teaching and Research Section has been honored as a distinguished basic-level teaching unit in Henan Provincial Undergraduate Universities.
Guided by the Outcome-Based Education (OBE) philosophy, the School adopts a student-centered approach, systematically constructing a continuous - improvement mechanism to ensure dynamic adaptation between talent cultivation and industry needs, which is achieved through defining training objectives based on social demand research, guiding curriculum design with student competency attainment, and driving quality iteration via multi-dimensional evaluation. From 2020 to 2025, the School has ranked among the top performers in four key indicators: first-choice application rate, postgraduate admission rate, academic competition awards, and graduate employment rate, demonstrating the outstanding educational outcomes.
Faculty: A Teaching Community Prioritizing Competence and Professionalism
With the goal of building a faculty team that is “politically steadfast, pedagogically excellent, and outstanding in both ethics and professionalism,” the School has established a three-tier development pathway: the Mentorship Program, Pioneer Teaching Workshops, and OBE Instructional Design Workshops, fostering a 3-2-2 foreign language teacher training system, enhancing the core teaching competence in digital empowerment and specialized expertise.
There are currently 112 faculty and staff members, including 21 with senior professional titles, 32 with intermediate professional titles, 3 teachers holding doctoral degrees, and 4 pursuing doctoral studies. Teachers with a master's degree or above account for 95% of the total. Among the faculty, there is 1 National Excellent Teacher, 2 Academic and Technical Leaders in Henan Province, 4 Teaching Pacesetters in Henan Province, 1 Teacher of Virtue Pacesetter in Henan Province, 1 winner of the "May 1st Labor Medal" in Henan Province, and 4 university-level Young Backbone Teachers.
From 2020 to 2025, faculty members of the School have published 184 research papers, including over 10 indexed in SSCI and other core journals, and authored 14 monographs. 4 provincial-level and 152 departmental-level research projects have been secured. Additionally, 36 provincial-level and over 20 university-level teaching awards have been accomplished, including the First Prize in Henan Teaching Innovation Competition, First Prize in National Foreign Language Teaching Competition, First Prize in Henan Education System Teaching Skills Competition, and Grand Prize in Chaoxing Cup Specialty Director Presentation Competition.
Talent Cultivation: An Integrated Competency-Progression System
Under the guidance of the New Liberal Arts Initiative, the School aligns with Henan’s regional industrial demands to deepen foreign language education reform. It integrates its multilingual and interdisciplinary strengths with the Industry-University-Competition-Certification quad-element model, anchoring an OBE-oriented multilingual and interdisciplinary talents cultivation objective. Focusing on core competencies of solid foundation, bilingual proficiency, specialized expertise, and strong practical skills, the School has developed a distinctive integrated training system for multilingual and interdisciplinary foreign language talents. Graduates are highly regarded by employers for their exceptional language proficiency, professional competence, practical skills, cross-cultural adaptability, and innovative spirit, demonstrating markedly enhanced employability and career development potential.
Course Construction: A first-class Course System Supporting Graduation Requirements
The School constructs our course groups that focus on graduation requirements on the orientation of fostering students ’capacities, on the standard of using advanced, innovative, and challenging teaching materials, and on the goal of “one teacher, one first-class course”. From 2020 to 2025, the School has been approved 9 teaching engineering projects, including provincial-level first-class courses, high-quality open online courses, curriculum ideological and political education demonstration courses, and research-based teaching demonstration courses, 7 university level first-class courses, 4 university level high-quality courses, and 15 university level curriculum ideological and political demonstration and cultivation projects.
Ability Testing: Empirical Outcomes from the Model of Promoting Learning by Competitions
Under the concept of promoting learning, training, and teaching by competitions, the School has systematically organized students to participate in various levels and types of discipline competitions, with an average annual participation rate of over 90%. During the years 2022 -2025, our students have won a total of 24 national level awards (156 people), including 2 special awards, 1 silver award and 3 bronze awards, and 27 first prizes (41 people), 28 second prizes, and 50 third prizes (81 people); and they have been granted with 37 provincial-level awards (253 people), including 9 special awards, and 33 first prizes, 61 second prizes, and 137 third prizes, totaling 351 prizes.
Development Achievements: Two-way Empowerment for Further Education and Employment
In recent years, the School has continued to put students first, focusing on connotation construction, improving the quality of talent cultivation, and taking multiple measures to increase the postgraduate enrollment rate and employment rate.
The postgraduate enrollment rates of our students in 2022 and 2023 both ranked first in the whole university. In 2023, the postgraduate admission rate was 13.81%. In 2024, the proportion of students who passed the national score line (a line determining whether you can be candidates for the postgraduate interview) was 48.1%, the reference admission rate was 28.2%, and the postgraduate admission rate was 16.92%. In 2025, the proportion of students who passed the national score line reached 69.8%, the postgraduate admission rate was 20.11%, wherein the admission rate for students majoring in Business English reached 27.27%, making the enrollment rate and number hit a record high.
The School has established a systematic employment guidance and school-enterprise collaborative training mechanism and carried out school-enterprise cooperation and internship base construction with more than 60 enterprises and public institutions. The average annual employment rate of our students has reached over 95%, and the comprehensive abilities of our graduates have been widely praised by employers.
Teaching Conditions: Practical Training for Competency Attainment
The School has complete teaching facilities, including 13 first-class and distinctive training sites that meet the needs of modern education and teaching. All facilities are designed to equip our students with professional competence: Intelligent Foreign Language Simultaneous Interpreting Training Room and Intelligent Computer Assisted Translation Training Room are used to train students’ reaction speed and accuracy in the process of translation and interpretation; Smart Reading and Writing Training Room and Smart Listening and Speaking Training Room are used to solidify students' foundation in foreign language learning; Smart Business English Comprehensive Training Room, International Business Innovation Center, and New Foreign Trade Studio are used to recreate real trade scenes; Prospective Teachers Comprehensive Skills AI Training Room, Micro-teaching Classroom, Three-Calligraphies Training Room, and Mandarin Testing Station are used to develop core teaching skills of students who want to be teachers in the future.
Facing new opportunities and challenges of higher education reform and development in the new era, the School stick to a localized, application-oriented, and internationalized educational positioning, deepen education and teaching reform, and develop a distinctive three-dimensional model for cultivating foreign language talents based on multilingual foundations, empowered by strong practical applications, and expanded through internationalization. The School will consolidate our professional core competitiveness, steadily improve the quality of teaching, nurturing well-rounded foreign language talents who combine global perspectives with profound Chinese roots, while excelling in cross-cultural collaboration, and fully promote the construction of a regional high-level foreign language college with outstanding disciplinary advantages and distinctive characteristics!
