The Department of College English offers courses of English and other foreign languages (Japanese, German, Russian and French) to both undergraduate and postgraduate students of all the colleges and departments of this university. The Department comprises 112 staff members, among whom 4 are full professors, 23 are associate professors, 64 are lecturers, 22 are teaching assistants. The Department is divided into three teaching and research sections and further divided into 10 English teaching and research groups and one teaching and research group who offers courses of German, Russian and French.
　　Strictly in accordance with the requirements of the teaching syllabus, the Department conducts graded teaching by laying emphasis on teaching processes and objective control to maintain teaching quality on an extensive basis. The courses in use are The 21st-Century College English and College Core English (for undergraduate students), and Multidimensional Course (for postgraduate students).

　　 Optional courses available to students include English Films, English Speaking, Interpretation, Practical English Writing, Business English, Audio-visual English, Advanced English Listening and History of Western Civilization.
The staff of the Department adopt the student-centred, communicative teaching mode and ask students to speak, practice and communicate as much as they can by way of questions and answers, elicitation and group discussions. How to organize class teaching effeciently and how to improve students' practical English skills are constant topics among the staff.
　　In recent years, the staff of the Department have completed several research projects, including multi-media teaching packages, college English test banks, college English textbook series and teaching materials for optional courses. They have also published scholarly papers in the nation's key foreign language teaching journals.

　　 Through reforms in recent years, the Department of College English has made remarkable achievements in teaching. In the national Band 4 and Band 6 tests of CET, the average scores of the students of Shanghai Jiaotong Universities are among the best in China’s Universities. In the English competitions of the university students, students from this university have repeatedly won first and second prizes. In the year of 2000, one girl student from Shanghai Jiaotong University won two first prizes respectively in the speaking contest and debating contest. The staff of the Department of College English have been commended several times by the relevant departments of the Shanghai Municipal Government.