the Department of Foreign Languages of Xi’an Institute of Engineering, and the Teaching and Research Section of Foreign Languages of Northwest Institute of Architecture and Engineering. In 2001, the School of Foreign Studies was formally established.

At present, the school consists of five teaching units ---- College English Teaching Division I, College English Teaching Division II, Department of English, Department of Japanese, and Graduate Foreign Language Teaching Division ---- as well as several service institutions, including the School Office (covering general affairs and teaching management), Office of Student Affairs, Language Laboratory Center, Center for Foreign Languages and Literature Education, and MTI Education Center.

The school undertakes the teaching of foreign languages at all levels across the university and is also responsible for training students majoring in foreign languages. It currently offers two undergraduate programs ---- English and Japanese ---- as well as a master’s degree program in the first-level discipline of Foreign Languages and Literatures and a professional master’s program in Translation and Interpreting (MTI). The annual enrollment plan includes 40 undergraduates in English, 20 in Japanese, and about 30 graduate students.

In the national TEM-4 and TEM-8 for English majors and NSS-4 and NSS-8 for Japanese majors, our students have consistently achieved excellent results. The one-time pass rate for both TEM-4 and TEM-8 is over 30 percentage points higher than the national average. Nearly 90% of our Japanese majors pass the highest level (N1) of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and their NSS-4 and NSS-8 pass rates are 20–30 percentage points higher than the national average. Students majoring in English and Japanese have also excelled in a variety of national competitions. Over the past five years, English major students have won outstanding awards in competitions such as the National English Competition for College Students, the National College English Speech Contest, the China Daily 21st Century Coca-Cola Cup National English Speaking Competition, the National English–Chinese/Chinese–English Translation Contest, the National Finals of the Innovative English Challenge, and Model United Nations Debate Competitions. Japanese major students have also repeatedly achieved excellent results in contests such as the “China Cup” National Japanese Speech Contest, the Sasakawa Cup Japanese Composition Contest, the Shaanxi Province Japanese Demonstration Contest, and the Shaanxi Province Japanese Translation Contest.

The school has developed several relatively stable teaching and research teams, with research focusing on foreign linguistics and applied linguistics, translation studies, intercultural and regional studies, among others. It is also home to academic research institutions such as the *Center for Translation and International Communication of Chinese Regional Cultures*. Among the faculty, one expert has been recognized in Shaanxi Province for outstanding achievements in undertaking national social science projects. In the past five years, our faculty have been awarded 2 projects under the Ministry of Education, led 34 provincial and ministerial research projects, published 58 papers in core journals, authored 19 academic monographs, 3 textbooks, and 4 translated works, and won 4 research achievement awards at or above the provincial level.

The orientation of the school is to take the overall plan of building a world-class university with first-class disciplines as a blueprint, align with the university’s “Double First-Class” initiative, deepen comprehensive reforms, strengthen education and teaching reforms, improve the quality of talent cultivation, and enhance Party building, especially at the grassroots level. Seizing opportunities and forging ahead, the school aims to continuously enhance its educational and research capacity, and to develop into a distinctive, teaching- and research-oriented institution.

The development goals of the school are to establish a system with a well-designed talent cultivation model and high-quality outcomes widely recognized by society, to build disciplines with distinctive features, a faculty team with balanced structure and high academic standards, and a high degree of internationalization—ultimately becoming a first-class, nationally renowned base for foreign language education in Northwest China.

The philosophy of the school is *“Quality first, connotation development, service foremost, and distinctive growth.”* That is, we place talent cultivation at the center, pursue connotation development and internationalization as the main pathways, serve both the needs of society for talent and the needs of the university’s disciplines for foreign language teaching, and follow a path of distinctive development.