School of Foreign Languages (FL) was founded in 1985, originally known as Department of Foreign Languages. It adopted its present name in January 2002. SFL has been enrolling English-major undergraduates since 1988, and Japanese-major undergraduates since 2003, and began to offer university-wide English-minor courses in 1995, and set up dual major and dual degree classes in 1999. FL currently provides 2 M.A programs: one in Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics which was set up in 1993 with the approval of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, and the other in English Language and Literature which was set up in 2003. In 2006 with the approval of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, M.A program in "Foreign languages and Literatures" was set up as Level-I discipline. At present, FL has an enrollment of 394 undergraduate students and 60 postgraduate students.

FL consists of Foreign Language Department 1 and 2, College English Teaching Department 1 and 2, South Campus College English Teaching Department 2, and Non-English Major Postgraduate Foreign Language Teaching Department, Foreign Language Training Center, Research Institute of Foreign Languages & Culture, SCUT Test Site of the National College Spoken English Test, and Test Scoring Site of National College English Test Band 4 and 6. Currently FL offers 1 M.A. program in "Foreign Language and Literature" and 2 undergraduate major programs: English and Japanese. FL has a teaching staff with rich experience in teaching and notable academic achievements, among whom 45.83% have earned doctoral degrees. Prof. QIN Xiubai has won the first "National Outstanding University Teachers" Award. "College English" is one of the first National Classic Courses and its Department is the College English Teaching Reform and Demonstration Center of the Education Ministry.

With the cooperative efforts of the staff, FL has developed its unique characteristics in training talented students of science with a good command of English and inter-disciplinary talented students of English and has played an important role in developing the overall quality of the undergraduate and postgraduate students.