Academic English Courses of the College WonRecognized Program Accreditation by the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL)
Recently, CFLthe College of Foreign Languages of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology (USST) received a notice from the Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) informing CFL that . aAfter deliberation by its Accreditation Committee, the core college English courses “Academic English” (including “Academic English Reading and Writing” and “Academic English Listening and Speaking”) of our university haves passed Recognized Program the initial Aaccreditation (by CIOL Recognised Programme). This wasis an important achievement of CFLthe College of Foreign Languages on its way to the road of internationalized educationschooling, as well as a significant breakthrough in the construction and teaching reform of its college English courses.
CIOL is a prestigious and long-established professional language institute in the UK. Its course accreditation scheme (CIOL RVC scheme) conducts professional and rigorous assessment ofon the academic English courses of higher education institutions and language teaching organizations, covering various aspects including curriculum structure, course content, faculty structurelevel, teaching methodsmethods, and students’ learning outcomes. It provides an authoritative third-party evaluation for language teaching quality and enjoys internationalwide recognition and influence internationally. At present, only a few universities in ChinaChina, such as the University of Nottingham Ningbo China and Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University have obtained this accreditation. The Academic English Course of the Sino-British College of our university passed the Stage 2 accreditation by CIOL in 2024.
In July 2025, CFL the College of Foreign Languages launched the CIOL accreditation application for the Academic English Coursescoveringtargeting all undergraduate students on campusof the university. Led by Professor Liu Qin, Dean of CFLthe College of Foreign Languages and a pioneer in the reform of college English teaching in our university, a special working group for accreditation was established to coordinate the data collection, material sorting, and application document preparationwriting of various departments in the School. After careful preparation, the accreditation application materials were officially submitted to CIOL at the end of 2025. In January 2026, the CIOL Accreditation Committee completed the review, spoke highly of the overall construction quality of the courses, and recognized that the Academic English Courses at USST of our university haves met the accreditation standards in terms of curriculum design, teaching management, faculty team, and education quality assurance.
"Academic English Courses" are the most influential core courses in the college English system at USSTof our university. Since 2012, USST haswe have implemented the teaching reform of academic English teaching reform, and gradually formed an academic English course system which is composed of “Academic English Reading and Writing” and “Academic English Listening and Speaking”. These courses, which stablyserve serves more than 2,000 undergraduate students every year. By Through combiningthe combination of theory and practice, and integrating d the integration of online and offline teaching, the coursesaimaims to cultivate students’ high-order language skills and cross-cultural communication abilities, and help them fully prepare for understanding academic lectures, participating in academic discussions, delivering academic speeches, and engaging incarrying out academic writing and research.
After more than ten years of development, “Academic English Reading and Writing for Science and Engineering” (the predecessor of “Academic English Reading and Writing”) was approved as a key undergraduate course by thein Shanghai Municipal Education Commission(SMEC) in 2013. “Academic English Reading and Writing” has successively been approved as a high-quality online course at USST. and a curriculum ideological and political demonstration course of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology. “Academic English Listening and Speaking” has successively been approved as a key undergraduate course, in Shanghai, and a first-class undergraduate course of online-offline hybrid teaching by SMECin Shanghai, and a curriculum ideological and political demonstration course of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, and a national first-class undergraduate course of online-offline hybrid teaching by the National Education Commission. CFL TeamThe team has carefully compiled the textbooks Reading and Writing Course Textbooks for Science and Engineering English (1st and 2nd editions) and Listening and Speaking Course Textbooks for Science and Engineering English with prominent characteristics of new engineering, which have been continuously used by more than ten universities in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Beijing, Jiangsu, Anhui, Shaanxi,etc.and other places, with a totalcumulative sales volume of nearly 30,000 copies, and won the second prize of the Excellent Undergraduate Textbook Award at USST of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology in 2023. In the field of educational digitalization, the “Academic English” online course launched by the course team on the Wisdom Tree platform has been usedselected by 162,000 teachers and students from 187 colleges and universities, and the number of learners of the virtual simulation experiment platform for international academic conferences developed by the team has reached 22,000. In 2018 and 2020, the teaching reform project of academic English for science and engineering in our university was twice approved as a key undergraduate teaching reform project in Shanghai twice. In 2018, the “Exploration and Practice of the Three-Dimensional Integrated Teaching Model of Academic English for Science and Engineering” won the second prize of the Shanghai Teaching Achievement Award.
The Academic English Course is an important part of the USST university’s excellent engineering talent cultivation system. The successful CIOL accreditation this time marks a solid step forward for CFL the College of Foreign Languages in the process of internationalized education.schooling. The school will take this accreditation as an opportunity to continuously optimize the teaching content and methods of the Academic English Courses and further improve its the level of internationalized educationschooling.
