In response to the call to accelerate the development of the technical & vocational education and to implement the“Three-Year-Long Action Plan”of the college, the Department of English has stepped up its efforts to contact with the enterprises concerned and continue its endeavor in the cooperation with the enterprise after successfully signing the cooperative agreements with Shanghai Shenhui Overseas Affairs Service Co., Ltd and ERKE (Shanghai Power & Yuda Sports Co., Ltd.).

On November 19,at the invitation of Mr. James Herrmann, the general manager of the company, Dean of the Department of English Professor Zhu Shichang, together with Associate Professor Chen Cheng, Executive Associate Dean of the Department of English, visited ICONX Experience Skateboarding, which was founded by Mr. Joe Eberling. ICONX is mainly engaged in instructing the Chinese students how to skateboard and the students are from various international schools scattered in Shanghai. Currently there are approximately 500 learners and the instructors are from different European and American countries.

On November 20, Professor Zhu, Associate Professor Chen Cheng and Ms Shen Hongbo, Associate Dean of the Department of English visited SELL (Emerging Industries Institute Shanghai)，where they were warmly welcomed by Mr. David Huang, the Director-General and Ms Ashley Cong, the Deputy Secretary-General of the institute. SELL is engaged in a wide area of business, which covers the service for the top 500 business corporation in the world, holds international conferences for different trade and the governmental leaders on a regular basis. Mr. Huang is quite familiar with the status-quo of the technical & vocational education in China and quite agreed with what Professor said that“technical and vocational colleges should make every effort to bring the education in line with the general requirement of the country and provide the best possible service to meet the needs of the society.”The conversation was both pleasant and informative.

After learning more about the details of the Department of English, both SELL and ICONX expressed their great in the cooperation with the Department of English in SICFL. The Department of English has reached consensus with both enterprises in the following three points: 1) The cooperative partners will further carry on the conversation with a view to signing the agreement as soon as possible, making it clear the benefits and obligations of the each other; 2) the enterprises are quite happy and ready to join in the discussion of the preparation of the syllabus of the English major and give lectures at the request of the Department; 3) The Department of English will, at the request of the enterprises, recommend some best students to take part in the volunteer services for the enterprises and recommend the students to be employed by them as well.

Both enterprisesalso expressed their hope that they were looking forward to having the closer cooperation with the Department of English, but at the same time they also expressed their ardent desire that the cooperation could be extended to other language programs as they also needed the students of other foreign languages. Both enterprises accepted the invitation from Professor Zhu with delight and they said they would spare some time infutureto come to the campus for a visit and continue the discussion of the cooperation.

The smooth implementation of the exploration of the cooperative programs with the enterprises will surely provide the students in the Department of English more platforms forpracticingtheir English, thus supplying more opportunities for development.