The Department of Foreign Languages and Literature at National Tsing Hua University has an equal focus on foreign literature and language science to cultivate students with both spirit of humanity and logical thinking. With a similar number of faculty members in the field of Western Literature and Linguistics, undergraduate students could freely choose either major or enjoy a balanced development of both types of knowledge. Graduate students would also benefit from our multidisciplinary courses to develop their own research topics. Ultimately, we aim to move toward a new direction to further expand our students' career choices.

Established August 1, 1982, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature enrolls a freshman class of about fifty every year. The cultivation and promotion of talent in foreign languages and in literature inform our undergraduate program. The required undergraduate curriculum consists of a core of foundational courses and an ample selection of upper-level courses in both literature and language. Not only does the solid selection of undergraduate courses offer students a wonderful opportunity for academic learning and intellectual enrichment, but the accessibility of courses to undergraduates in the department's master's program (in both literature and language teaching) as well as those in the Linguistics Institute also offers undergraduates further opportunity for advanced learning. In addition, the department offers a practicum of elective courses, preparing students for a smooth transition to the professional market beyond their studies.

A merger in 1995 of what were formerly known as the Literature Institute and the Foreign Literature faculty at the university resulted in the founding of the department's master's program. In 1997, building upon already existing faculty, resources, and facilities of our department, we added formally the Foreign Language Education faculty to complete the graduate program in foreign languages and literature. Consisting of 18 permanent faculty and 31 adjuncts, our faculty has the tremendous professional strength and depth to serve the entire university's needs for foreign language education, in addition to covering the department's own curriculum. The specializations of our faculty range from western literature, linguistics, foreign language education, to oral translation, and courses that professors in the department offer allows students to take an intellectual interest in a wide variety of topics and areas. Our faculty is known for excellent teaching, as many receive excellence in teaching awards from the university on a regular basis. In addition, our faculty is widely acclaimed for its research, as many members receive funding for research projects from the National Science Foundation, Ministry of Education, and Ministry of Culture, and as the research results of faculty are frequently awarded and recognized by the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Science and Technology, and other agencies and organizations.Foreign Language Education division in our MA program was renamed as Language, Cognition and Teaching in 2012 and further again as Language Research and Teaching in 2020.

The department is located in NTHU's College of Humanities and Social Sciences, a spacious building which has its own library, the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, a branch of the university library with 198 study desks for students and researchers. Currently the college's library collection includes about 483,907 items in Chinese-language and western-language books and journals from Taiwan and China, more than 1,884 up-to-date journal subscriptions, and the library's collection in all categories of reading, research, and media resources continues to expand.

The department space includes the department office, faculty offices, a lounge for adjunct and non-permanent faculty, assistants' offices, regular classrooms, multi-media computer-equipped classrooms for language teaching, language lab, conference rooms, graduate students' computer lab and study.

Every classroom has air conditioning and a complete set of multi-media technology, allowing and encouraging the use of film media and software in classroom teaching, and offering students more possibilities in academic enrichment through the use of the school's system in digital learning. Moreover, the language lab provides multi-media facilities and ample visual and aural media material for language learning, such as hundreds of DVDs encompassing language-learning material for English, Japanese, German, French, Russian, and Spanish. Students are free to access such language-learning material in their spare time, and faculty members also reserve material in the lab for students working on language proficiency outside the classroom.