The College has four departments: the Department of the Chinese Language, the Department of Business and Trade Chinese, the Department of Chinese Culture, and the Department of Bilingual Education and Translation. It offers 8 majors: Chinese Language, Chinese Instruction(as a second language), Mass Media Chinese, Business and Trade Chinese, Chinese Culture, the Bilingual Program (Chinese & English), Japanese-Chinese Translation and Korean-Chinese Translation. These programs are aimed at equipping the students with proficient Chinese language skills, and with a solid understanding of China and its people, ensuring their versatility and adaptability in their future endeavors. Upon completing a degree, they will be able to possess both language and professional skills. Every year over 1,600 students come to study from more than 60 different countries and areas. By 2004, over 3,000 students had completed their degree education and been awarded graduation certificates and BA degrees by the College of Chinese Studies.

There are over 110 instructors in the College, including 44 professors and associate professors, 56 lecturers and 5 teaching assistants, over 20 of which have doctoral degrees and 45 of which have master’s degrees. They are professional teachers and researchers of many fields including Chinese Language, Chinese Literature, Linguistic Studies, Chinese Philosophy, Chinese History, Chinese Business and Economics, English, Japanese and Korean. Our instructors have a broad range of experiences, lecturing and researching both internationally and domestically. Through the years they have garnered prestige and influence in their related fields; their achievements include the General Teaching Syllabus for College Education of Chinese, the Curriculum Norms and a series of textbooks for overseas students studying Chinese for a B.A. degree.

To meet the new trends in disciplinary development, the changing needs of the international recruitment market, and the changed profile of overseas students, The College is implementing a reform program on its educational modes, course content and course management systems. With the spirit of development and innovation, the College is determined to establish itself as one of the top international institutes for overseas students pursuing B.A. degrees, to become the first choice for those who want to study Chinese language and culture, and continue to be the prime research center for the teaching of Chinese to overseas students.

Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU), an international university, is the mere one of its kind in China mainly responsible for the tasks of teaching the Chinese language and culture to both foreign students and Chinese students. The College of Humanities and Social Sciences & the College of Teachers’ Training plays a very important role in BLCU, due not only to the strong teaching force, mature and peculiar educational modes for undergraduates, postgraduates and other high-level talents, but to such majors as teaching Chinese as a second language that owns a leading position in China.

The college comprises the following units: the Department of Teaching Chinese as a Second Language (TCSL), the Department of Chinese language and Literature, the Department of Art, the Department of Social Sciences, the editorial department of Chinese Culture Research, the Chinese Culture Research Institute, the Sinology Research Institute, the UN Research Center, the Qu Yuan Association, etc. Of the staff members, 89% have either full professorship or associate professorship, and 21 ones have doctoral degree. Working together with the full-time teaching staff are several retired professors. The research and publications of the staff have exerted much influence in the academic circles.

Orientated around the established educational aim, the college has been upholding the strategy of refined cultivation, developing the features and advantages and practising the educational modes of interconnecting the varied majors and programs. It has fostered a large number of excellent professionals for both China and the world. In addition to strengthening the foundations of each major, the college has provided for students a vast platform to develop themselves fully. The students have their own literary societies, saloons and magazines such as Lai Yuan and Voice of Literature as well as newspapers such as Lai Yuan.

The College of Advanced Chinese Training is an offical institution specializing in long-term Chinese Training for overseas students. Its programmes include further Chinese training for foreign students, Preparatory Chinese training (for students whose future majors are natural science, engineering, agronomy and medicine etc.), associate degree and mandarin training for overseas Chinese and people from Hong Kong,Macao and Taiwan.

The college has two departments and one training center:elementary Chinese training department,intermediary and advanced Chinese training department and mandarin training center. The Programmes provided by the College are aimed at improving the learners'communicative skills in Chinese,deepening their understanding of Chinese history,culture and China's status quo,and enabling them to become personnel of good language proficiency and high competitiveness. In addition, the College has a research institute conducting research on long-term training for overseas students and other related fundamental issues.

The college has nearly 80 teaching staff including over 30 professors and associate professors, and more than 40 lecturers. They have been long engaged in teaching Chinese to overseas students and doing Research in this field. Due to the rich teaching experience they possess and the significant research results they have achieved, they always enjoy great popularity among international students. The Chinese textbook series they complied are best sellers worldwide and the first choice of those who want to learn Chinese and Chinese culture. Every year nearly 10 teachers are invited to lecture or conduct research in Hong Kong,Macao and abroad.

In order to meet the new training needs of the market and stressing on the long-term feature of its training base, The college has implemented various teaching reforms,which includes:establishing new teaching modes and curriculums adjustment. Meanwhile, the College is carrying out  fundamental and experimental research. Based on its  strengths as  an offcial institution providing long-term Chinese training, the College is determined to become the teaching and research center for the sustainable development of teaching Chinese to overseas students.

The college has 98 faculty members, among which nearly 40 are professors and associate professor and more than 50 have been to other countries to teach Chinese, participate in research, and undergo the academic exchange. Besides teaching Chinese, they also engage themselves in Chinese Language, Chinese Teaching Pedagogy and Chinese-foreign language contrastive analysis, etc. and have achieved fruitful achievements. Some Chinese intensive training teaching materials written by them have gained great popularity among many countries.

The college is consisted of the Department of Intensive Chinese Study, the Department of Advanced Chinese Study and the Teaching and Researching Institute of Accelerated Chinese Study. The Department of Intensive Chinese Study and the Department of Advanced Chinese Study are responsible for accelerated intensive training, general intensive training, and short-term intensive training, respectively. The Teaching and Researching Institute of Accelerated Chinese Study specializes in the overall designing of the short-term and accelerated Chinese instructions to foreign students, installation of curricula, the study of teaching methods and compilation of teaching materials.

CICS is specialized in short, accelerated and intensive teaching, which can help foreign students markedly improve their ability to communicate in Chinese (especially their listening and speaking skills). It pays great attention both to the standardization and scientificalness of the overall designation and the pertinence, practicability and flexibility of the implementation, which can ensure that students can achieve their aims in a short time. In 2004, the Construction of the Short-Term Accelerated Intensive Chinese Teaching System gained the first place of Beijing Higher Educational Teaching Prize.
In order to satisfy the different educational need of each student, the college offers accelerated intensified Chinese courses, common intensified Chinese courses and short-term intensified Chinese courses at the beginning, intermediate and advanced grade levels, including 6 different levels- A,B,C,D,E and F. Furthermore, the classes are designed systematically, which means class stands independently, yet closely integrated, to enable students to take the short-term learning path or continuous learning path. In addition, CICS offers special-purpose language training courses in accordance with the specific needs of certain students or organizations. The curricula are based on studying characters and the special needs of the students.

CICS also offers after-class optional courses to satisfy students’ need to improve their Chinese in a short amount of time, which means grasping more Chinese language and culture knowledge and understanding Chinese society more profoundly.

CISC offers courses periodically all year round. Besides the 20-week accelerated intensified courses and common intensified courses offered in the Spring and Autumn semesters, CICS also offers the short-term intensified courses—which range from 4 to 12 weeks—at various times throughout the year, 30 hours a week for the accelerated intensified courses and 20 hours a week for the common intensified courses.
In addition, CICS arranges colorful language and culture practice activities for the students. Activities include: visiting historical and cultural sites, factories and countryside, communicating with native Chinese, performing in Chinese, participating in a Karaoke or article writing competition, and other interacting activities which aim to raise the each student’s enthusiasm for learning by bringing them in contact with society and life of the Chinese people.

The Department of Computer Science and Technology is specialized in computer science and technology and the Department of Information Management in information management and systems. With a top-notched contingent of excellent teachers recruited from both home and abroad, the college takes the full advantage of good English environment in the campus and intensifies its efforts in improving students’ English language proficiency, with some courses using original English textbooks and some teaching even conducted entirely in English, so as to enable students to use English in their specialized fields. Furthermore, the College has signed an agreement with Leiden University of the Netherlands and sends excellent students every year to study in Holland. Meanwhile, the College cooperates with several famous Japanese IT companies in human resources and scientific research. And the College is also a participant in IBM’s College Cooperation Project.

The College is prestigious in its preparation of top talents, who have won excellent results in international and national competitions in mathematical modeling, English and mathematics. And among the first graduates, 25 percent enter post-graduate studies at home or abroad while the majority of them work in Beijing or work for foreign companies and they are very popular among employers.

The Center for Language Information processing was founded in 1987. It is the first institute which takes Chinese processing as its main research field in China. It is dedicated to the research on the theories of computational linguistics and information processing oriented to Chinese linguistics, developing key technology of natural language processing and knowledge bases, as well as developing relative tools and utility software in order to support teaching of Chinese as a second language and the study of the language itself and promote social informatization. The center admits post-graduate applicants pursuing master’s degree and doctor’s degree on computer application and applied linguistics. And the Center also enrolls students who want to pursue advanced studies from all over the world. It is committed to the integrated development of all disciplines related and fostering advanced professionals who master both the theory and technology of natural language processing.

The College has undertaken more than a dozen scientific research projects, including those supported by the National Natural Science Funds, the State 863 Plan and MOE’s research program on some key scientific and technology issues. Up to now the faculty has published scores of papers and several textbooks. Some of the research results, for example, on Chinese participles, information search, language nature search, voice synthesis and recognition, knowledge retrieval, computer-aid language learning, are on the leading level domestically and internationally, and some have already been successfully commercialized. Moreover, the recent research on data mining has already yielded quite a few published papers.

Most of the Chinese teaching staff of PTD-BLCU have had training and /or education in overseas universities. More than two dozens of expatriate teachers are also on the faculty. With the experience accumulated over half a century, PTD-BLCU aims at improving the language proficiency of the trainees. Focusing on the use of foreign languages, the classes at PTD-BLCU are highly intensive and the trainees have plenty of opportunities to practise what they learn, especially in a university which has more than five thousand international students from over one hundred countries.

Aided by advanced teaching equipment and modern teaching materials, the Chinese and expatriate staff are able to use a variety of teaching methods to ensure that trainees achieve significant progress in the four language skills – listening, speaking, reading and writing. The quality of teaching and the effectiveness of the training are acknowledged by the Ministry of Education and appreciated by the trainees.

In addition to the normal classes that are held during school semesters, PTD-BLCU runs training sessions in the evening, over weekend, and in summer and winter vacations. To further accommodate the needs of specific groups of people, PTD-BLCU offers preparation classes for specific language test such as IELTS, PETS-5, TEF, and JPT.

Being part of the educational system of the country, PTD-BLCU readily fulfils the tasks entrusted by Ministry of Education. In addition, PTD-BLCU is often commissioned to hold training courses for other government departments.

The IELTS Training Centre of BLCU

In 1987, the Predeparture Training Department of Beijing Language and Culture University started to offer intensive language training for IELTS candidates who planned to study in or emigrate to English speaking countries. With increasing numbers of people needing high quality training courses, the University decided to set up a special center in 2001 to better accommodate these needs. All the center staff have taken the materials and practice test papers. The centre is the only one in China that has been offering IELTS preparation courses for 16 consecutive years. The centre has been working closely with China Scholarship Council , the Ministry of Education, the British Council, the Australian Embassy and a number of other Chinese or overseas institutions to provide training for candidates of scholarships such as the Sino-British Friendship Scholarship Scheme, the Chevening Scholarship etc. Now there are pre-intermediate, intermediate, and advanced classes for students with different levels of English. Apart from the regular weekday classes in the morning and afternoon, the centre also runs courses that are held in the evening, over the weekend and during summer and winter vacation.

2. Major Features:
The characteristics of our college teaching and education system are:
2.1 A multi-disciplinary course syllabus
2.2 Flexible course-selecting system
2.3 Newly-designed credit system
2.4 Scientific assessment system
2.5 High quality-control system

3. Four departments:
3.1 Department of Continuing Education
The Department of Continuing Education provides degree programs for full-time and part-time adult learners. There are four majors: English, Chinese, Japanese, and Finance.
The degree programs include a two-year Associate program for high school graduates, a two or three-year Bachelor program for associate college graduates， and a four-year Bachelor program for high school graduates.
In the past two years, the department has reformed the courses and syllabus for adult learners, taking into consideration their special needs.
The credit system adopted by the college allows students flexibility in choosing courses, teachers and classes. The department website (http://cec.blcu.edu.cn) provides a platform for teachers and students to enhance efficiency. The department also arranges various extracurricular activities such as the ‘English Garden’, English Debating, Drama, Speech Competitions, and sporting activities to stimulate students’ broader interests in the learning process.

3.2. Department of Network Education for Chinese Students
The College of Network Education is one of the sixty-eight universities in China that was formally approved by the Ministry of Education to provide online education in September 2000. The Department of Network Education provides China-wide online education and subsidiary services for Chinese students.
Recently the program has increased to five majors: English, Chinese, Japanese, Finance, and Computer Science. The degree programs include a two-year Associate program for high school graduates, a two or three-year Bachelor program for associate college graduates， and a four-year Bachelor program for high school graduates.
The website （http://www.eblcu.net.cn/）is the platform for teachers and students in our department providing students’ online self-study programs, together with tutorials, BBS(an online forum for staff and students), and lectures by experts in each major. The distance education function of the College exploits the excellent teaching resources at BLCU and extends nationwide the important educational influence of BLCU.

NEC Nationwide
At present, there are 11 teaching centers around China: Tianjin, Shenzhen, Sichuan, Hangzhou, Dalian, Guanxi, Yunan, Shanxi, Huhehaote, Changsha, and Heilongjiang.

3.3. Department of Distance Teaching of Chinese as a Foreign Language
The Department of Distance Teaching of Chinese is responsible for arranging the online courses of EBLCU, teaching administration, teaching service, website maintenance, and market development. It comprises the following divisions: Teaching Affairs Administration Office, Resource Development Office, and Market Development Office.

EBLCU (http://www.eblcu.net)
This is a professional teaching website providing distance degree and non-degree programs in TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language) worldwide. It has the unique distinction of being the only organization in China qualified to grant degrees in Chinese language and culture to foreign students via distance learning.

EBLCU Agents
Many agents have been engaged to enroll new students and a marketing network that may one day cover the globe is gradually taking shape. The students can login to the website at anytime to register, select and study courses, or take online exams. EBLCU provides different languages for the convenience of learners from different countries. So far, students from 44 countries and regions in the world enrolled to study Chinese via EBLCU, and more than ten thousand prospective students have registered at EBLCU to commence in the future.

3.4. BLCU Training Department
BLCU Training Department is a professional training organization ratified in 1992 by the Haidian Social Education Administration Office. BLCU Training Department, with its various programs, is attached to the Continuing Education College.

In the ten years since its establishment, the BLCU Training Department has conducted full-time or part-time specialized training programs for government departments such as the Ministry of Education, State Ethnic Affairs Commission, China National Tourism Administration, and the Administration of Cultural Heritage of Henan Province. In addition, it has conducted various short-term training or pilot training programs for English, Japanese, French, Korean, PETS (Public English Test System), CET-4, CET-6, TEM-4, TEM-8, Adult National Entrance Examination, and HSK.

With its vigorous administration and high-quality teaching, BLCU Training Department has established a good reputation and has won favorable comments and high praise from the trainees. For detailed information, please visit: http://cec.blcu.edu.cn.

4. Future Plan
In five years, the college plans to enroll 2500 students in the Department of Continuing Education, 10,000 students in the Department of Network Education for Chinese Students, 5,000 students in the Department of Distance Teaching of Chinese as a Foreign Language, and 1,000 students in the Training Department.

New majors will be included in the syllabus: Art, and in the languages section, German and French. The college also plans to implement postgraduate programs and add areas of specialization for some majors. In this way, the college will develop into an educational unit with multi-discipline, multi-degree and multi-purpose features.

The International Business School of BLCU consists of the Department of Finance, Finance Research Institute, the Department of Accounting, Accounting Research Institute，Business Training Center and a modern multi-media laboratory. It focuses on the schooling of undergraduates in Finance and Accounting (International Accounting), the schooling of graduates in International Politics (International Economy) and other training courses. Core courses conducted in English characterized the teaching style of the School, providing the students with a wide array of choices in subjects and offering the opportunity of studying in a mixed class of Chinese and foreign students.

The School has a well-qualified academic faculty in various specialties. All the teachers have obtained a master’s or doctor’s degree and most have the experience of studying or teaching abroad and are capable of conducting lessons in English. The School also pays much attention to the academic exchange, and recruits and invites scholars well-known in China and abroad to give lectures or teach here.

Bilingual teaching makes both the specialties of Finance and Accounting special, with Finance putting more emphasis on practical operations and Accounting on international principles. The School aims at achieving perfect combination of theory and practice and keeps close pace with the international latest development in the field, and gives illustrations in Chinese or both English and Chinese for the difficult points in classes.

To meet the great demands for talents with sound knowledge of finance, accounting, management, and trade, and capability of fluent English, the International Business School has set up Business Training Center, offering various training courses to the society.