I. We have set up foreign language majors with YAU characteristics based on the core endeavor of college foreign languages teaching. With virtue fostering as our fundamental task, we seize the opportunities brought by the national Belt and Road initiative and the rise of Yunnan as a regional pivot opening toward South and Southeast Asia to seek sustainable development of foreign language disciplines based on the actual situation of YAU. Offering foreign language courses for undergraduates and postgraduates in all majors, we help upgrade YAU's characteristic and dominant agricultural majors with high-quality foreign language teaching. We promote the in-depth interdisciplinary integration of general and non-general language majors and other majors of the university. While upgrading the existing majors, we have established multilingual undergraduate majors with YAU characteristics and a master's program in translation, preparing high-quality foreign language talents to meet the needs of local economic and social development and the security and stability of border ethnic areas.

II. We have constructed an ideological and political education platform for foreign language courses to fulfill the fundamental task of fostering virtue through education. We are committed to the fundamental task of virtue fostering and the teaching objectives for foreign language majors and non-foreign language majors. Adhering to the principle of “enriching everyone with ideals and faiths”, we are integrating ideological and political education with foreign language teaching and constructing the ideological and political education platform for foreign language courses. As a college in an agricultural university, we are compelled to enhance students’ traditional cultural literacy and increase their knowledge about and love for agriculture. To serve this purpose, we have launched a series of activities such as bilingual handwritten newspapers with the theme of agricultural culture, foreign language story-telling and so on. In cooperation with the College of Marxism, we hold the Forum for Ideological and Political education in Foreign Language Courses, in which outstanding teachers from the College of Marxism are invited to give lectures on the connotation and development of the socialist core values, to achieve a great integration between ideological and political education teachers and foreign language teachers.

III. We have achieved remarkable educational results by carrying out foreign language teaching reforms. Following the student-oriented approach, we attach great importance to the development of students’ abilities of study, application and innovation. A number of reforms have been carried out in foreign language education and teaching to prepare our students as qualified foreign language talents with excellent abilities of learning, thinking, creation, cooperation and leadership, who are proficient in listening, speaking, reading, writing and translating and have the broad knowledge of humanities and social sciences as well as agricultural science and technology. Students are encouraged to participate in various competitions to sharpen their language skills. We have language skill training teams of experienced teachers to help students prepare for the competitions. Over the years, our students have achieved brilliant results in national and provincial contests of foreign language speech, writing, reading, vocabulary and translation. For example, in the 2021 “FLTRP·ETIC Cup” English Public Speaking Contest in Yunnan Province, one of our students won the Grand Prize and other 2 students won the First Prize.

IV. We have set up teaching advisor teams to help teachers improve their teaching ability. In order to further improve the teaching skills of our teachers, we establish teaching advisor teams composed of professors and experienced teachers. They offer advice and guidance in teaching design, method, process, and implementation effect. In recent years, with the help of the advisor teams, our teachers have made great award-winning achievements in various teaching contests, including the YAU Teaching Contest, Yunnan Provincial College Teaching Contest, and the “SFLEP” National Foreign Language Teaching Contest, in which two teachers won the second prize and third prize respectively in the national finals, and many other teachers the provincial-level grand, first, second and third prizes.