Soochow’s Reforms on English Education Aim to Raise Students’ Competitiveness: 550 on TOEIC before Junior Year

To enhance students' English ability is no longer a slogan! Soochow University has started its reforms on English education, hoping to help its students reach a score of 550 or above on TOEIC at the end of their sophomore year, as well as to increase their competitiveness in the job market before graduation.

Working with Chun Shin Ltd. Co., the official agent of Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Taiwan, to initiate the “Industry Cooperation Project of Enhancing Students’ English Proficiency,” Soochow University held a signing ceremony on April 29, 2016 in its Waishuanghsi Campus as the school President Wei-Ta Pan signed the contract with the company’s chairman Zuo-Jun Shao. The project will not only pay the testing fees for students under the school’s budget, but also introduce language management into the school’s English education, using students’ TOEIC scores as references for course evaluation and curriculum design.

With a focus on increasing students’ competitiveness in the future, Soochow University has been subsidized by the Ministry of Education’s Teaching Excellence Project for 12 years in a row, and its graduates have shown outstanding performances in the job market. President Pan stressed that the University has been paying close attention to changes and trends in various industries and thus nurturing talents with global visions and practical skills, and that to make education practical and useful has always been the primary goal of Soochow University.

To achieve the goal of cultivating talents with global visions for the job market, the University has started to implement its new school-wide language management policy, with testing students’ English proficiency as a first step. Students who enrolled or will enroll in the academic years of 2015, 2016 and 2017 are required to take the TOEIC tests in the second semesters of their freshman and sophomore years. Their scores in such pre-tests and post-tests will be used to evaluate the efficacy of the English courses and to improve the curricula to increase students’ competitiveness in the workplace and in the world.

“A score of 550 on TOEIC has become a common requirement for employees’ English proficiency in Taiwan’s job market,” explained Mao-Sung Lin, Dean of the School of Foreign Languages and Cultures. Students should reach such a standard by the end of their sophomore year, and continue to improve their English ability in the following two years with a more specific focus on the area or industry of their career planning, so that they can enter the job market with ease upon graduation.

Therefore, Soochow University has initiated reforms on the school-wide general required English courses. Starting from this semester, as Lin pointed out, the three-hour freshman English courses consist of one hour of international English communication oral training, while the sophomore English courses also focus on international English communication and business English. Starting from the academic year 2017-18, different schools in the University will offer different general required freshman and sophomore English courses, which will better meet their students’ needs and specialties. In addition, courses such as legal English, business English, practical English, etc. will be offered to the juniors and seniors to fit their needs and raise their competitiveness in the future job market.

 Under the leadership of President Pan, the reforms have been supported by all the schools and departments. Pan regards it as important to establish a university’s own brand in an era of declining birthrate. Accordingly, quality control is the most fundamental element of establishing the brand, and “language management is an integral part of quality control of Soochow’s graduates,” said Pan.

Chairman Shao of Chun Shin Ltd. Co. also hoped this joint effort by Soochow University and the company would set a successful example of college-level English language learning management in Taiwan. Through such language management, it is very likely to create a three-way win-win situation where a university can establish its own brand, its graduates will have better competitiveness and the industry may recruit competent employees.