The Hindu : New Delhi News : More language courses for JNU

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Friday, Aug 03, 2007
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More language courses for JNU

Parul Sharma

NEW DELHI: Jawaharlal Nehru University is keen on expanding its School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies in a major way by bringing more Indian and foreign languages within its purview.

Proposal to UGC

In its 11th Plan recently submitted to the University Grants Commission (UGC), JNU has sought expansion of the School and introduction of more languages, according to Coordinator (Evaluation) S. Chandrasekaran.

Talking about the proposal, Dean of School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies Varyam Singh said: “Till now at the Centre of Indian Languages we have just been teaching Hindi and Urdu. We want to introduce several other languages like Bengali and Marathi. In fact, we want that the Centre ought to be developed as a full-fledged School of Indian Languages during the 11th Plan where all Indian languages will be taught and research work on the literature of these languages carried out.”

Increase in seats

Further, the School has also demanded an increase in the number of students being admitted to Korean, Japanese and Chinese languages.

“The demand for these three languages is really amazing. Our students are getting fancy packages after passing out. Considering the high demand, we want an expansion of these departments and also bifurcate the existing Centre for Japanese, Korean and North East Asian Studies into a separate centre each for Korean and Japanese languages,” said Prof. Singh.

In addition to introducing Swahili language, the School is also looking forward to further expanding teaching of languages like Turkish, Bhasha Indonesia, Italian and Portuguese that are till now being offered as part-time programmes.

“We want all these languages to be taught at the B.A. and M.A. level and develop a separate centre for Italian and Portuguese. We have also sought positions for a professor and a lecturer each for Greek and one lecturer for Hebrew in the 11th Plan,” added Prof. Singh.

The University has also asked for further expansion and technological upgrading of the Language lab.

Infrastructure development

A lot of infrastructure development is on the anvil once the 11th Plan gets approved by the UGC, assured Dr. Chandrasekaran.

“We will build more hostels, labs and a convention centre. There will be more houses and other facilities for the faculty members. We have requested the UGC to give us money to construct an additional annexe building for each School at JNU,” he said.

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