The Centre was founded in 1977, introducing full sets of imported language laboratory equipment into foreign language teaching ahead of most other universities in China. In the past twenty years the Centre has received special funds from Project 211 and Project 985 to build new language laboratories, providing an ideal environment for establishing a national base of college English teaching at Shanghai Jiaotong University.

　　The Centre now has 18 language laboratories (with a total of 750 seats) and 2 multi-media, multi-functional audio-visual rooms (with a total of 350 seats). All these language laboratories and rooms are equipped with imported language teaching systems and 16 of these are also equipped with computers and multi-me-dia systems. The multi-functional audio-visual rooms are equipped with advanced centralized control systems, super-screen televisions and hi-fi audio systems to facilitate multi-media instruction. Besides the traditional language laboratories, the Centre has up-to-date discussion-type open language laboratories. The multimedia production room provides the fundamental hardware and software for developing and making multi-media foreign language teaching packages.

　　The Centre now has a fixed asset of around 8 million Chinese yuan and a language-laboratory floor space of around 2,000 square metres. The Centre is currently staffed with one senior engineer, two technicians and three teaching assistants.