Hankuk Univ. Spearheads Foreign Language Education Collaboration
By Kang Shin-who, Park Si-soo
Staff Reporters
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS) is working on proactive collaboration with Asia-Pacific universities for foreign language education.
As part of the effort, HUFS opened the 2007 Asian-Pacific Summit Forum on Foreign Language Education on Wednesday, titled ``Opportunities and Threats for Foreign Language Education in the Global Era.''
Heads of nine universities, which are specialized in foreign language education, from seven countries including China, Russia, and Turkey, attended the forum.
Three presentation and discussion sessions will be held for two days from today. Nine university heads will present the vision and strategies of their schools during the first session, ``Domestic and International Cooperation,'' and the second session, ``Vision and Strategies'' which will be held at Aekyung Hall at HUFS, Thursday.
``We can launch sustained cooperation in the area of foreign language education policies among the universities in the Asia-Pacific region. I believe experiences gained through our sustained cooperation can eventually lead to the construction of a similar pan-Asian framework and possibly a global framework,'' HUFS president Park Chul said.
Park also called on the participating presidents to actively join in the scheme to expand these exchange networks among the universities.
``The mutual knowledge of each others' cultures and language-learning contexts which would result from increased faculty exchanges is also one step on the path toward an integrated standard of language education in the Asia-Pacific region,'' he said.
The participating schools are Beijing Foreign Studies University, Sichuan International Studies University and the University of International Business and Economics in China; the Azerbaijan University of Languages and Gadjah Mada University of Indonesia;, Moscow State Institute of International Relations in Russia; Chiang Mai Rajabhat University in Thailand and Ankara University in Turkey.
On the following day, the third session, ``Roundtable Discussion'' will invite all the university representatives chaired by the HUFS president.