“Language is the future”, Zha said. He emphasized that it is necessary to boost the country’s soft power through foreign language education. “China and the world should learn about each other through languages,” he said.

Zha appreciated the language teaching experts, competition judges and contestant teachers at the seminar. “Holding this competition is a kind of creativity,” Zha said. “I believe that through various forms of contest, the competition can improve the teaching standards and promote the reform of foreign language teaching in colleges and universities.” He said that the "SFLEP Cup" has been a fair, authoritative and widely-influential stage in the past ten years. 

Zha also suggested ways on how the competition should be improved. As teachers’ mastery of multimedia has diversified teaching forms, they should now focus more on employing the technology to develop students’ ability of critical thinking. As for middle-aged teachers, attention should be paid to improving their knowledge structure to keep in pace with the times.

The seminar was chaired by Xie Yu, deputy editor-in-chief of SFLEP. Foreign language experts from Fudan University, Nanjing University, Beijing International Studies University and SISU discussed the form, content, standard, influence and brand building. They also explored the language skills enhancement and curriculum construction in China’s foreign language teaching.

Since its origin in 2010, the "SFLEP Cup" has become a benchmark competition in China’s foreign language education, covering nearly 1,000 universities across the country.

Founded in 1979, SFLEP is a university press sponsored by SISU in the charge of China’s Ministry of Education. SFLEP has become one of the largest and most authoritative foreign language publishing bases in China.