On the afternoon of January 9, SFL, SJTU held a plenary conference presided by Ding Jian, Deputy Party Secretary of SFL, to review 2018’s work. The meeting was also attended by other faculty members, such as Hu Kaibao, Dean of SFL, Xing Lianqing and Zhang Hongmei, SFL’s Deputy Secretaries, Peng Qinglong and Changhui, Deputy Deans of SFL. 
Professor Hu was in charge of reviewing SFL’s 2018 work. In 2018, the School of Foreign Languages was able to realize the aims of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, by focusing on the deployment of the school party committee, and taking inspections as an opportunity to promote the development of the college's various undertakings. SJTU also made great progress in talent cultivation, scientific research, recruitment of qualified teachers, programs for international students and cultural exchange activities. Professor Hu spoke highly of the groundbreaking achievements made in 2018, including the election of Shang Biwu as a foreign academician in the Academy of Europe, the approval of Ding Hongwei’s project as a Major Project by the National Social Science Fund of China, and the admission of the project “Reform of College English Teaching” to the list of Key Reform Projects for Undergraduate Education in Shanghai. 2018 was also the year in which the project “Reform and Practice of Graduate Training” was awarded with the second prize of National Teaching Achievements in Higher Education, SFL students impressed us in foreign language competitions, such as the national competition of debate in German, and the number of SFL scientific works broke records. Professor Hu also congratulated faculty members for their efforts and expressed his wish to continue working together to achieve new successes in the future. In addition, he presented 2019’s work prospects based on current work issues. In 2019, SFL will continue to promote the implementation of the comprehensive reform program, increase the introduction of high-level talents, improve the supervision of the teaching process, and further deepen the reform of foreign language teaching in universities.

Professor Peng Qinlong made a report about SFL’s 2016-2018 scientific research. His analysis on the publications in the last three years showed a rise in the number of published papers, books and projects, as well as awarded works. In addition, he proposed several solutions to SFL’s current problems, after analyzing the publication of high-level papers by each department. 

Teacher representatives shared their experience on scientific research work. Ding Hongwei, the director of the project “Corpus Construction of Mental Disorders and Language Studies on Brain Science and AI” ( an approved Major Project by the National Social Science Fund of China), summed up how to do a good job in scientific research: “learn well, be persistent and perseverant, choose our topics wisely, be open to asking questions, be prepared, be meticulous and pay attention to detail”. In addition, Lin Zibo, a teacher of the Japanese department, humorously shared his teaching and researching experiences during the last four years with “My Experience and Understanding of Scientific Research”. He encouraged all young teachers to persevere in scientific research, as he believes it sooner or later pays off. 
During the conference, Yang Ying, associate editor of Science Press, also introduced the late declaration of the National Social Science Fund of China.