Education, Language and Sociology Research ISSN 2690-3644 (Print) ISSN 2690-3652 (Online) Vol. 4, No. 2, 2023 www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr 171 Original Paper Model Construction of Education Community for Foreign Language Major: A “Great Ideological and Political Courses” Perspective Wang Xi1 & Zuo Jiaxin1 1 School of English Studies, Xi’an International Studies University, China Received: May 6, 2023 Accepted: May 27, 2023 Online Published: June 15, 2023 doi:10.22158/elsr.v4n2p171 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v4n2p171 Abstract “Great Ideological and Political Courses” conforms to the goal of talent training in the new era, which is a practical innovation of ideological and political education reform in universities. At present, the problems of foreign language courses with ideological-political elements in universities include (1) loose cooperation between professional teachers and ideological and political workers, and (2) disconnected goals between teaching and educating students. In this study, a model of education community is constructed to solve these problems through coordination between professional teachers and ideological and political workers, the formulation of cultivation scheme, and complementary between professional and extracurricular classes, which will be applied to all aspects of foreign language education at university level, so as to promote the construction of ideological and political theories teaching in all courses (IPTTIAC). Keywords foreign language courses with ideological-political elements, education community, great ideological and political courses, IPTTIAC 1. “Great Ideological and Political Courses” and Education Community Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, President Xi has pointed out, “We should make good use of the ‘Great Ideological and Political Courses (大思政课)’ and must combine it with reality”. It is an inevitable choice under the background of “two overall situations (两个大局)”, clearly showing the direction for promoting the construction of ideological and political theories teaching in all courses (IPTTIAC). With the implementation of the education concept of “all people, whole process, and all-round”, “great ideological and political courses” is no longer limited within universities, but by www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr Education, Language and Sociology Research Vol. 4, No. 2, 2023 172 Published by SCHOLINK INC. mobilizing all available social resources to extend teaching place from classroom to the society. It aims at building a collaborative education system involving multiple subjects such as families, universities, society, and the government. “Great Ideological and Political Courses” sets moral education as the fundamental task, implementing three-wide education (三全育人) in the process of teaching (Yang & Zhao, 2022). “Great” is reflected in space, time, structure and function. The construction of “Great Ideological and Political Courses” requires the combination of multiple subjects and various resources, so it is not only an educational concept, but also a cultivation method. “Community” is an important concept in anthropology and sociology. The establishment of education community is a significant way to realize all-member cultivation, which can effectively promote IPTTIAC. As a bridge for the development of Chinese and western language and cultural exchanges, foreign language major integrates knowledge and humanism. In foreign language courses, teachers not only explain culture background of the target language, but also cultivate students’ cross-cultural communication competence. However, the differentiation between professional courses and theories of ideology and politics leads to the lack of teachers’ and students’ cognition on development conditions of Chinese path to modernization. Based on the concept of “Great Ideological and Political Courses”, this paper will construct a model of education community for foreign language major, so as to effectively implement foreign language courses with ideological-political elements. 2. Problem Analysis of Foreign Language Courses with Ideological-political Elements As a frontier discipline in international exchange and communication, students of foreign language major directly face western language, culture and values, and therefore become more susceptible to the influence of utilitarianism, egoism, worship of foreign things, etc. As a result, students gradually ignore the excellent traditional Chinese culture and lack cross-cultural critical thinking ability. At present, the construction of foreign language courses with ideological-political elements in universities is still a big problem, facing difficulties such as the lack of close cooperation between foreign language major subjects and the disconnection between foreign language teaching and educational goals. 2.1 Loose Coordination between Subjects in Foreign Language Major Foreign language teachers, as the main implementer of foreign language teaching, need to improve their ideological and political awareness. Due to scattered structure and limited professional ability, ideological and political workers are unable to carry out high-quality education (Lan & Qin, 2022). The former has difficulty in combining the ideological and political thoughts with professional knowledge, leading to the failure to add ideological-political elements in foreign language classes, while the latter are unable to connect the ideological and political theory with practice in daily study and life, failing to arouse the enthusiasm of students. The government, enterprise, society, family and other educational subjects have different properties and educational goals, thus students are hard to apply professional skills in practice to meet needs of each subject (Deng & Yan, 2021). The education subjects of foreign language www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr Education, Language and Sociology Research Vol. 4, No. 2, 2023 173 Published by SCHOLINK INC. major do not cooperate closely in teaching, social practice arrangement and management, which reduces the effect of teaching foreign language courses with ideological-political elements. 2.2 Disconnection between Foreign Language Teaching and Educational Goals The goal of the current cultivation scheme is not clear, leading to the separation between training specifications and social needs. The curriculum system does not reflect the combination of general, professional and multi-disciplinary knowledge (Wang & Feng, 2018). For a long time, foreign language teaching in universities pays more attention to the explanation of knowledge and skill training of target language. There are a large number of ideological and cultural learning materials from western countries in textbooks, making it difficult to integrate Chinese culture and ideological and political concepts into the curriculum outline and textbook compilation. The existing setting of curriculum and textbooks of foreign language major lacks the participation of ideological and political workers and other educational subjects, which is hard to meet the needs of the government, enterprise and society (Liu & Feng, 2022). It is difficult for teachers to teach foreign language courses with ideological-political elements. 3. Model Construction of Education Community for Foreign Language Major Given the dilemma of foreign language teaching with ideological-political elements, this paper constructs a model of education community for foreign language major as shown in Figure 1. The development of cultivation scheme for foreign language courses in universities should fully cover the activities of the professional and extracurricular classes. The professional class takes the main position in front-line education and teaching, led by core education subjects, i.e., foreign language professional teachers and ideological and political workers. The two should join forces to participate in the whole process of cultivation scheme formulation, teaching outline setting, textbook compilation and teaching design. As an extension of the professional class, the extracurricular class refers to relevant practical activities, which is an important channel to cultivate students’ ability of innovative practice and improve their ability of application. The participation of auxiliary education subjects, namely the government, enterprise, society and family, is consistent with the core education subjects of the professional class. Their implementation places and activities are more flexible, such as practice week, internship, volunteer service, etc. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr Education, Language and Sociology Research Vol. 4, No. 2, 2023 174 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Figure 1. Model of Education Community for Foreign Language Major from “Great Ideological and Political Courses” Perspective 3.1 The Composition of Education Community for Foreign Language Major The Core education subjects consist of foreign language teachers and ideological and political workers. The former refers to full-time foreign language teachers in universities, the latter includes faculties in the school party committee, league and student work department, school propaganda department, party school, youth corps committee, student affairs office, student union and other institutions, counselors, ideological and political teachers, head teachers and other staff. Auxiliary education subjects include the government, enterprise, society, family, etc. As the core education subject, foreign language teachers should not only have a solid language foundation and a deep understanding of Chinese and western cultures, but also have a firm political stand, actively support the socialist core values, and spontaneously integrate ideological and political education into foreign language courses. Ideological and political workers mainly shoulder the responsibility of organizing and managing the study and life of teachers and students in universities, spread Marxism and socialism with Chinese characteristics, and lead teachers and students to establish correct values. The two subjects need to communicate actively and promote teaching foreign language courses with ideological-political elements through collective lesson preparation. The auxiliary education subjects like the government, enterprise, society and family take universities as the core hub with practical activities as the carrier, make full use of social resources, cooperate with society actively, create more practice opportunities for students of foreign language major, and improve their awareness of practice innovation and problem solving ability in order to better serve national development. 3.2 Formulation of the Cultivation Scheme for Foreign Language Talents The talent cultivation scheme of foreign language major need to give a full consideration to the professional and extracurricular class. Foreign language teachers and ideological and political workers www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr Education, Language and Sociology Research Vol. 4, No. 2, 2023 175 Published by SCHOLINK INC. should cooperate closely to fully connect with the demand of local government, society, enterprise, combine special characteristics of each universities, set training goals, ensure the quality of training, and optimize the curriculum system. Foreign language major aims at cultivating students with proficient language skills and excellent culture background knowledge. Through optimizing the curriculum system, foreign language major can set up courses with ideological elements, such as “Translation of Discourse with Chinese Characteristics in New Era”, “Comparison between Chinese and Western Culture”, etc. Students’ interdisciplinary practical ability can be improved by strengthening the cooperation between universities and society. 3.3 Construction of Professional Class through Core Education Subjects Foreign language teachers should invite the ideological and political workers to join in the collective lesson preparation and set up the curriculum outline with socialist core values and interdisciplinary content. The course syllabus should be dominated by professional knowledge and skills in foreign language with the support of ideological-political elements and excellent Chinese culture. The two subjects should cooperate to compile school-based teaching textbooks from the aspects of material selection and the integration of ideological-political elements, such as selecting the content that can make students understand the achievements of China’s responsibility and development. Professional teachers can apply communication approach, task-based approach, project approach and seminar teaching approach in class design, comparing the similarities and differences in history, culture, system and development of different countries. For example, teachers can associate contemporary setting and view COVID-19 as a breakthrough, instruct students to hold model APEC or debate in foreign languages in order to think critically western democracy and system, and compare political ideology between China and the West. In this way, students can establish correct values in foreign language learning. Improving teaching objectives is an important task of IPTTIAC teaching design. In foreign language teaching, linguistic knowledge and ideological-political elements should be naturally combined. In addition, the ideological and political evaluation should be integrated in the assessment of teachers and students. The method of combining students’ evaluation with teachers’ self-evaluation and mutual evaluation should be adopted. This aims at evaluating the achievement of educational goals, the degree of integration of ideological-political elements, teaching content and methods. 3.4 Expansion of Extracurricular Class through Auxiliary Education Subjects In order to achieve consistency between the extracurricular class and the professional class, universities should cooperate closely with each auxiliary education subject. The main subjects of auxiliary education should clarify their responsibilities, standardize the collaborative management system, allocate resources rationally, build a cooperation platform between government, universities, enterprise and family to realize information sharing. In this way, professional foreign language education and social development are in the same direction. Auxiliary education subjects cultivate students as talents who attach equal importance to language expertise and practical ability. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr Education, Language and Sociology Research Vol. 4, No. 2, 2023 176 Published by SCHOLINK INC. Compared with the professional class, the extracurricular class is more diverse in terms of place, content and form. The auxiliary education subjects should make full use of the highlights in the extracurricular class to improve students’ practical ability. In terms of place, auxiliary education subjects can use their existing space to launch internship in offices or to build practice bases together. In terms of content, auxiliary education subjects can increase the varieties of students’ practical choices, and organize activities like public speeches on the theme of telling Chinese stories in foreign language, foreign language painting and calligraphy exhibitions and foreign language drama, so as to enhance students’ interests and guide students to innovate. With the complementary advantages of the extracurricular and professional classes, the auxiliary education subjects assist the core education subjects to help students establish correct values and world outlook. 4. Conclusion In the context of globalization and socialism with Chinese characteristics, more and more excellent Chinese culture and thoughts merit further exploration (Wang, 2021). Teaching foreign language courses with ideological-political elements faces multiple opportunities and challenges. The construction of education community for foreign language major is an effective way to implement foreign language courses with ideological-political elements. With the support from auxiliary subjects, core education subjects of foreign language major continuously deepen the concept of education community and integrate teaching resources with ideological-political elements. The professional and extracurricular classes complement with each other to achieve three-wide education. In this way, students of foreign language major will learn language knowledge, distinguish cultural differences, and enhance correct core values. Acknowledgements This study was supported by Undergraduate Teaching Reform Research Project “Model Construction and Practice of Education Community for Foreign Language Major from the Perspective of ‘Great Ideological and Political Courses’” (22BYDSZ05) and Postgraduate Education Comprehensive Reform Research and Practice Project “A Study on the Teaching Model and Teacher Discourse System of Foreign Language Post-graduate Student Courses Based on Legitimation Code Theory” (22XWYJGA28). References Deng, H., & Yan, M. (2021). On the Construction of Practical Education Community for Innovation and Entrepreneurship in College. Communist Party Construction and Ideological Education of School, 1, 94-96. Lan, B., & Qin, Y. (2022). Collaborative Education in Broad Ideological and Political Courses: Values, Problems, and Solutions. Teaching and Research, 2, 92-100. www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr Education, Language and Sociology Research Vol. 4, No. 2, 2023 177 Published by SCHOLINK INC. 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