Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, NSYSU

- The Department, through its powerful resources and excellent faculty, provides an outstanding curriculum at the bachelor, master, and doctoral levels.

- The Department covers an extensive range of English and American literature. Our faculty includes specialists in Medieval, Renaissance, eighteenth-century, nineteenth-century, and twentieth-century literature, Irish literature, new literatures in English, comparative literature, ethnic studies, gender studies, indigenous studies, and cultural studies.

- The Department’s faculty members interested in General and Applied Linguistics specialize in second language acquisition and in exploring links between language and society, between language teaching and technology.  

- The well-known poet Yu Kwang-chung brings an intimate, scholarly knowledge of poetry to the Program, especially Romantic English and modern English poetry.

Our courses reflect the richness and diversity of foreign languages and cultural and literary studies. In literature, the Department offers courses related to literary theories and criticism, covering literary periods from the Middle Ages to the present time. The linguistic courses range from applied linguistic studies to English teaching and second-language acquisition. The Department also provides interdisciplinary courses on cultural studies to enhance students’ cross-cultural understanding in a globalizing world.

The Undergraduate Program offers students three tracks of courses to take: track in English and American literature, track in linguistics, and track in translation/interpretation. 

The track in English and American literature offers students a variety of courses to foster students' familiarity with primary texts as well as to deepen understanding of the contexts, social, cultural, political, and philosophical, from which literary texts emerged.

The track in linguistics offers students courses in general linguistics (e.g. syntax and phonology) and applied linguistics (e.g. discourse analysis, language acquisition, and English teaching).

The track in translation provides students a forum to drill their translation skills.  Course offerings include English-to-Chinese translation, Chinese-to-English translation, Literary Translation, and Media Translation.

We also provide a solid training in English skills. Required courses that develop skills in reading, writing, listening and speaking are offered throughout the first three years of their studies here.  Faculty members utilize multimedia or a content-based approach to engage students in useful, meaningful, and informational activities. Thus students learn English through the process of having to use it in an interactive context.

The Graduate Program is the first graduate institute of its field in the universities in southern Taiwan to offer master’s and doctoral degrees.  The Master’s Program offers two tracks of study for students interested either in literary studies or applied linguistics. The Ph.D. Program is exclusively dedicated to literature.  The Program in Literature is a program in English and American literature. We provide courses that emphasize a wide range and variety of literary forms, periods, and traditions, as well as the study and interpretation of literature in contexts provided by history, philosophy, and various specific cultural, political, and social formations of power, class, race, and gender.  The Program in Applied Linguistics provides students with a solid foundation for defining and resolving questions related to the nature of language. Faculty and graduate student research spans a wide range of topics in linguistic theory and practice.