Overview

Since its establishment in 2003, the Language Center has been in charge of planning and designing school-wide foreign language courses, aiming at creating an enriching foreign language curriculum for students and faculty of NCU. The overall curriculum includes the following courses:

Freshman English:

Covering the four language skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing for the in-coming Freshmen.

English electives:

Providing courses for Sophomore and above undergraduate students to continuously enhance their English ability. The Center also offers courses to graduate students, including Academic English Writing, to strengthen their English language skills for the academic purposes.

Electives in other foreign languages:

Offering school-wide elective courses on various foreign languages, including Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean.

Chinese as a foreign language courses:

Consisting of quarterly intensive Chinese language courses, semester Chinese courses, and Chinese language teaching credit program, offered by the Chinese Language Division from the Language Center.

Freshman English Reform

Starting from 2022, the Language Center has initiated the reform of Freshman English courses, with the goal to help students better adapt to the EMI courses in their majors and respective disciplines. The major change in the course reform is to extend the credit hours from the original 2-hour to the 3-hour Freshman English per semester. Other implementations also include:

Discipline areas:

All the Freshman English courses are divided, according to the disciplines, into four main areas: engineering, humanity and social science, management, and science. Students enroll in the course of one of the areas that matches their majors.

Course content:

In addition to the four skills of listening, reading, speaking, and writing, the course also focuses on skills such as oral presentation.

Practice sessions:

During the evening hours, a one-hour practice session led by teaching assistants is held, which aims at further strengthening students’ speaking and writing abilities.

Guided study groups:

Activities such as guided study groups are held, which concentrate on cultivating the autonomous learning abilities outside of the regular class sessions.