Organization

NWU is one of the first 180 selected units experimenting college English teaching reform approved by Ministry of Education. With the support of our university, the Department of College English Teaching Reform was established in early 2006, probing into teaching model reform. This is a young, cooperative, aspirant, and dynamic group, with 12 faculty members---1 professor and 11 lecturers, who all have Master's Degree, and 6 of them are doing in-service study for Doctoral Degree.

The Department of College English Teaching Reform undertakes teaching tasks for 14 different colleges of their 2 grades, and the new teaching model, large class teaching combined with small class guidance and Web-based autonomous learning, has been adopted. Since the tentative teaching experiment was launched in 2004, this department has successfully hosted English speech contests, vocabulary games, writing contests, and so on, aiming at improving students' practical abilities in English by combining classroom teaching with extracurricular activities, as well as giving full scope to students' initiative . The faculty of the department zealously attended academic symposia at various levels to exchange their experiences of teaching reform. With the support of the University and foreign language college and the joint efforts of everyone, the one time CET-4 passing rate of 2004 grade students reached 84%, and the average passing rate of 2005 grade students reached 83%. Students from 2006, 2007, and 2008 grades achieved good results in both written and network CET-4. Remarkably, Cheng Youyang, a student from teaching reform class, got the excellent score of 668 in network test of Band 4，2009. NWU’s English teaching reform was highly praised by experts in 2004 undergraduate teaching assessment , and in 2008, we achieved first-batch exemplary base of teaching reform in Shaanxi province.

All faculty members of our department have been paying equal attention to teaching and scientific research, doing the research in teaching, while promoting the teaching in research. In recent years, they have published nearly one hundred papers in related fields, hosted or participated in more than 30 teaching or researching programs, and got numerous awards in NWU teaching plan contest. Due to the excellent teaching quality and outstanding teaching achievements, we obtained NWU Teaching Quality Award in 2007 and 2009 respectively, as well as Teaching Achievement Award, Provincial Teaching Achievement, etc. Moreover, students, under the instruction of the faculty members, have won various awards in English completions of different levels.