Founded in 1965 as the Department of English under Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages, the Faculty of English Language and Culture (FELC) is one of the oldest and academically most established faculties at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. Over its 50 years of dedication, FELC has made outstanding achievements in teaching, research, and the development of academic disciplines, and is highly recognised across the country.

FELC boasts a strong faculty team. Over the years, it has had five recipients of the special government allowance of the State Council, one national-level teaching master, one national model teacher, one national outstanding teacher, five individuals supported by the Ministry of Education's New Century Excellent Talents Support Programme, two provincial teaching masters of Guangdong, one Outstanding Teacher of Guangdong, seven Excellent Teachers of Guangdong, one recipient of the Guangdong May 1st Labour Medal, one recipient of the Guangdong May 4th Youth Medal, one provincial labour model, seven individuals selected for Guangdong's Thousand-Hundred-Ten Talent Project provincial-level training, and one individual under the Guangdong Special Support Plan. Currently, FELC has 30 professors, 24 doctoral supervisors, and 46 master’s supervisors. Among the faculty, there is one vice-chair of the National Foreign Languages Teaching Advisory Board under the Ministry of Education, one member of the English Teaching Advisory Subcommittee of the Foreign Languages and Literature Professional Teaching Advisory Board of the Ministry of Education, one member of the National Textbook Committee’s Foreign Language Expert Committee, one vice-chair of the Guangdong Provincial Foreign Language Professional Teaching Advisory Board for Undergraduate Education, one chair of the English Subcommittee of the same committee, and one Pearl River Scholar distinguished professor. The faculty has established two Yunshan Chief Expert Studios for Foreign Languages and Literature at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. Additionally, FELC is a founding unit of the Drama Research Committee of the Society for Comparative Studies of Chinese and Foreign Languages and Cultures (China), the secretariat unit of the Guangdong Provincial Teaching Advisory Board for Undergraduate Foreign Languages Programmes, and the chair unit of the Guangzhou Foreign Studies Association.

As one of the first national first-class programmes of the “Double Ten Thousand Plan”, English language and literature at FELC has been recognised as an outstanding programme, a featured programme, and a key programme by Guangdong Province, and a construction unit of featured programmes and a pilot unit of comprehensive programme reforms by the Ministry of Education. It was rated “Excellent” in the first national undergraduate teaching evaluation by the Ministry of Education. Upholding the concept of “whole-person education and categorised excellence”, it has set up the Experimental Class for Outstanding Linguistic Talents to implement the integrated training system of undergraduate, MA, and PhD students. FELC offers five specialisation tracks and course modules, i.e., English and Comparative Literature, Translation and International Communication, Area Studies and Cross-Cultural Communication, Language Science and Application, and Language Information Management. FELC It boasts one nationally distinguished teaching team, four nationally first-class courses under the Double Ten Thousand Plan, three nationally distinguished resource-sharing courses, five provincially distinguished teaching teams, seven provincially first-class courses under the Double Ten Thousand Plan, three provincially distinguished online open courses, and two provincially distinguished resource-sharing courses. It has won two national and ten provincial teaching achievement awards. It has one provincially recognised experimental lab for talent cultivation model innovation and one provincially recognised practice base. FELC has produced fifteen nationally recommended textbook series and three provincially distinguished ones.

Postgraduate education at FELC started in the late 1970s. It was granted the qualification to confer MA degrees in 1981 and PhD degrees in 1986, as one of the earliest institutions in China for such accreditations since the country resumed its postgraduate education programmes in 1979. FELC encompasses four Category-II academic discipline master’s and doctoral programmes: English language and literature, linguistics and applied linguistics, technology and assessment for foreign language teaching, and comparative cultural studies, among which linguistics and applied linguistics is a national key academic discipline and English language and literature a provincial one. Foreign language and literature, the Category-I academic discipline it belongs to, is a provincially peak-climbing key academic discipline, a Class-A academic discipline recognised in the fourth national board review of academic disciplines by the Ministry of Education, and one of China’s top academic disciplines of soft science for three consecutive years, ranking the top 2% nationwide. FELC boasts two international joint programmes accredited by the Ministry of Education: MA TESOL in collaboration with the University of Leeds and MA English Language Education with the University of Reading.

Oriented toward the major needs of the country and its own strategic development, the faculty adheres to quality upgrading and attaches equal importance to basic and applied research. With many years of dedication, scientific research has become the new normal. In the past decade, FELC has been granted more than 50 national, ministerial or provincial research projects, of which 26 are national social sciences foundation projects or humanities and social sciences foundation projects of the Ministry of Education. It has published over 20 academic monographs, and more than 500 papers in top peer-reviewed domestic and international journals, of which over 100 are in international SSCI and/or A&HCI journals. It has also won 9 scientific achievement awards at the national or provincial level.

FELC has long been committed to international exchanges and cooperation, maintaining close ties with many overseas universities and research institutions. Taking advantage of various programmes, such as the Excellent Undergraduates Programmes of the China Scholarship Council, the High-Level University Visiting Programme, the International Training Programme for Outstanding Young Researchers in Higher Education Institutions, the Summer Programme of Short-term Visits and Academic Courses at World Famous Universities, and Bay-Area Campus Programme, FELC carries out international joint training and academic exchange activities including dual degrees, single-project dispatches, “3+1+1” integrated undergraduate and postgraduate studies, and master’s and doctoral students’ academic visits.

（Updated to Oct. 2024）