Academic English at Northwestern Polytechnical University refreshed

Dedicated to pioneering innovative education and research programs, Northwestern Polytechnical University, or NPU, a multidisciplinary institution in Xi'an, Shaanxi province, has become a recognized leader in meeting the demand for talents who are both proficient English speakers and well-trained researchers and professionals in cross-cultural communication.

As part of NPU's efforts to cultivate students' presentation and research communication skills, since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative it has developed a course entitled "Academic English Presentation: Method and Practice", aimed at sharpening students' critical thinking abilities, fostering their innovation competency and enhancing their cross-cultural communication skills.

Utilizing content-based instructional strategies, the course constantly refreshes its material, providing students with challenging tasks to practice their academic communication skills while encouraging them to effectively use English in academic contexts. It encompasses group discussions, creation and analysis of promotional videos, conducting surveys and interviews, reporting news and delivering academic presentations.

By integrating authentic English audio and video materials with students' academic presentations, the goal is to bolster cross-cultural communication skills. The synergy of teachers' lectures and students' discussion and research helps the enhancement of critical thinking, and by combining linguistic theories with language practice, the course significantly improves students' research communication skills.

As an effective practice of innovative instruction, the NPU's course has become a compulsory component of the English program and national first-class undergraduate major construction. Over the past three years, English majors have won 14 international awards, 19 national awards and 21 provincial awards. In the past 24 years, more than 1,000 students have taken the course.

According to students' feedback, the course is both challenging and helpful in empowering them to pursue and communicate their own research. Although compulsory for junior English majors, it attracts non-majors every year, and participants have conducted multimodal analyses of promotional videos from universities like Peking University, Imperial College London, Harvard University and Yale University, offering comments on graphic design, script and voice-over, while also creating their own improved promotional videos.

The effect of the course is reflected by the successful organization of English Academic Presentation Competitions at NPU and in Northwest China. More than 100 undergraduates, graduates and doctoral students from 16 universities and colleges have entered the National Competitions of Five-Minute Research Presentation, with course participants winning two grand prizes, three first prizes and nine second prizes.

While students have made impressive progress, members of NPU's instructional team have likewise garnered achievements in teaching and research. Led by Zhang Yi, a professor who has been recognized as Outstanding Teacher of Shaanxi Province and winner of the second prize of the National Teaching Achievement Award, the team includes young doctors and researchers in the fields of linguistics, literature and business who graduated from prestigious universities at home and abroad. Named the Core English Curriculum Teaching Team of Shaanxi Province, its members have won more than 10 awards at the provincial and ministerial levels.

The team also integrates overseas visiting scholars and has carried out comparative linguistics research and cooperative teaching with seven teaching teams from universities in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Sweden, Belgium and New Zealand.