SHU Language Center-About the Center

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The Audiovisual Language Learning Center is in charge of developing and promoting an environment favorable for learning foreign languages, to assist students in enhancing their foreign language skills. Regular tasks of the Language Center include planning and executing courses in listening and speaking practice for English and other foreign languages. It maintains a faculty of dedicated teachers, with each teacher having a strong educational background and earnest attitude toward teaching. Three of the full-time local and foreign faculty members hold doctoral degrees. The Language Center maintains three language labs as well as a rich array of educational software and hardware facilities for language instruction.

The Language Center's educational approach is lively, and emphasizes practicality and interesting content. As English listening and speaking practice is a required course for the entire freshmen class, students are divided into three streams based on the result of a placement test administered at the beginning of the first semester. A unified listening comprehension test is enforced to gauge the progress of student learning at the end of each semester.

To further engage the interest and enthusiasm of the students in English, The Language Center sponsors two contests per year. In the fall semester, the speech contest encourages students to focus on oral skills. In the spring semester, a skit contest is held as a spur to students' creativity and skill in English.
In 1999, to offer students the opportunity to study a second foreign language, the Language Center established a course in Japanese listening and speaking practice. In the future, the Language Center will create additional language courses.