Abstract: Yan Fu's thoughts on English education in his English Grammar Explained in Chinese and other works are to be summarized from such perspectives as the inheritance and innovation of Chinese excellent traditional culture, the combination of explicit and implicit Chinese culture educational methods, and the consolidation of the position of Chinese language and culture; the guiding value of his thoughts for foreign language education reform in the new era is then analyzed. It is believed that Chinese language and culture, state consciousness, and thinking modes were integrated into his thoughts on and practice of English education. Moreover, his closed-loop proposition, "combination of explicitness and implicitness", could help combine English education with traditional Chinese culture education, therefore inheriting excellent traditional Chinese culture from a new perspective, promoting the confidence in Chinese culture, and consolidating the position of Chinese language and culture in the process of English education. Therefore, Yan Fu's thoughts on English education, as a representative of China's "endogenous" foreign language education thoughts, has important guiding value and can provide reference for integrating state consciousness and Chinese culture into current foreign language education and building an ideological security system in China's foreign language education field.

Key words: Yan Fu, thoughts English education, cultural inheritance, cultural confidence