a are becoming bilingual (English and Chinese), even multilingual. Not only do English-language media like CCTV-9, China Daily and Shanghai Daily recruit BJE graduates, but Chinese-language media organizations are also willing to enroll bilingual journalistic staff members, who can directly interview English speaking people inside and outside China. Liu Hong, an editor-in-chief of Jobweek, a newly founded weekly newspaper in Shanghai, found that it is hard to attract BJE graduates to her newspaper as her publication is not big enough and the salary from other media organizations is more competitive. Besides, BJE students who did their internships at different newspaper agencies found that they were given more opportunities in their jobs simply because they have the ability to use the English language along with their basic journalistic skills. (2) More Chinese universities have started journalism programs in the past decade. In 1992, China only had 52 schools of journalism and 77 journalism departments. Ten years later, in 2002, those numbers jumped to 96 and 232, respectively. From 2002 to 2003, the number of journalism programs has reached 323, an increase of 91 journalism programs in just one year. To enhance competitiveness for their journalism graduates in the job market, journalism programs in different universities are striving to develop a distinction for their programs and they have found BJE to be a good option. (3) Media institutions and professionals in China are eager to learn from the Western journalistic practices to enhance their international influence. For example, Southern Weekly (Nanfang Zhoumo), a popular weekly newspaper in China, advocates publicly that it is following the model of the New York Times. The newly founded School of Journalism at Tsinghua University is trying to enhance its influence by importing a series of original English textbooks on journalism and communication. BJE has surely catered to all the needs. Case Study of BJE To have a better understanding of the BJE teaching model in China, particularly its development in the past 20 years, this paper has selected the BJE Undergraduate Program at Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) for a case study. Three reasons are cited to have selected the BJE Undergraduate Program at SISU for the case study. First, SISU is one of the pioneers in starting its BJE program and has enjoyed a good reputation in the area throughout the country; second, despite its changes from dual BA degree holders to undergraduates as well as graduates in the past 20 years, SISU has continuously run its BJE program and kept its sequential focus on international journalism ever since its start in 1983; finally, SISU, which started as a foreign-language school, can best demonstrate and also represent the existing BJE teaching model in China because language is a key element in understanding the BJE model in China. The case study of the BJE Undergraduate Program at SISU in this paper is going to focus on the BJE students’ first job orientation and overall course arrangement (curriculum), because job orientation can reflect its competitiveness and curriculum can demonstrate it uniqueness. Corresponding to the above reasons for China to promote BJE programs, Table One has confirmed the good job prospects for BJE students at SISU from 2001-2003. In the past three years, half of the BJE students at SISU can find jobs in large influential media organizations in China at the national and regional levels, such as Xinhua News Agency, Jiefang Daily, CCTV and Shanghai Television Station, instead of small-scale media at the community level. This explains the purpose of their BJE training, as large and influential media tend to use more of their English skills while small-size media do not need their English skills as they only focus on local Chinese communities. Table One: BJE Students’ First Jobs at SISU (2001-2003, all in %) Students’ First Jobs 200120022003Influential Media56.7741.4654.72Government Organs16.224.887.55Banks07.325.66Overseas Study8.119.767.55Graduate Study5.4112.211.32Foreign Firms5.412.441.89Others8.1121.9511.32This job orientation focusing on English skills is also obvious in BJE students’ selection of banks and foreign firms (less than 10%) engaged in public relations, advertising, and marketing. These are all highly paid jobs that require good command of English in communication with people from different cultures. Of course, the high salary is also the most important factor for graduates to go to banks, foreign firms and companies, where they can work without an interpreter. Of course, most others (less than 20%) still prefer to seek higher education at home and abroad, a channel for even higher personal development which may also be related to their English skills. Their high marks of TOEFL and GRE have qualified them with scholarships in countries like the United States. Even though government organs are considered prestigious jobs in China, the number of BJE students going to work in government is decreasing (from 16 % to 7%) in recent years, which may indicate a liberal trend among BJE students. The English ability of BJE students at SISU is surely guaranteed by their extensive English training both in their English courses and journalism classes conducted in English. While other journalism students have almost all their courses in Chinese, the curriculum of the BJE program at SISU has a predominantly higher proportion of English courses for students. As is showed in Table Two, the curriculum of the BJE program at SISU can basically be divided into four categories (excluding internship, 8 credits, about 5%): general courses in Chinese (46 credits, 27.88%), required English language courses (52 credits, 31.52%), required journalism courses (in English, 22 credits, 13.33% and in Chinese, 10 credits, 6.06%) and elective journalism courses (also in English, 14 credits, 7.88% and in Chinese, 13 credits, 8.48%)

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