Beijing Foreign Studies University is the foreign language university with the longest history and the most language programs in China. It has China’s first batch of foreign language and literature doctoral programs and the first postdoctoral programs, and is well-known for having professional teachers and fruitful academic achievements.

In March 2000, the university set up the National Research Centre for Foreign Language Education, taking foreign language research as a basis and gathering research talents from the English department and other language departments. In September of the same year, the center was approved as a Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Science in Universities (KRI) by the Ministry of Education(MOE).

The centre has three basic research missions, including the innovative research of the theory and practice of foreign language education; the contrast of Chinese and foreign languages; and the research on foreign language learners and foreign languages, their learning and research , from the perspective of big data.

The main tasks of the center include undertaking major scientific research projects, generating key research achievements; training high-level researchers, forming innovative academic teams; providing policy theory coultation, pushing forward domestic and overseas academic exchanges.

The centre now has 23 researchers, including 12 full-time researchers, one full-time developer, two part-time researchers, eight postdoctoral and six assistant scientific researchers. It also boasts a postdoctoral program and a master’s program for foreign linguistics and applied linguistics, which are an important training base for China’s high-level foreign languages researchers.

Over the past 18 years, the centre has been transformed into an institution for scientific research and talent training. Between 2009 and 2018, it approved 63 research projects, including 17 projects of the National Social Science Fund of China and 15 key projects based on the MOE. The centre has published 655 reports and professional books.

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