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Over the past few years, there has been an exponential increase in the number of people taking up foreign languages. The reason: more job opportunities opening up in other countries. In Bangalore, there are several multi-national companies who need th eir employees to be trained in at least one foreign language, so as to handle on-site assignments better in their parent companies.

Mohammed Shakeel, a student who plans to go abroad to study, said, “When one is applying to universities abroad, knowing a foreign language helps. We instantly get more weightage. Also, acquiring a new language will never go out of style.” Lakshminarasimhan N., a software engineer with a multinational company, said that after he got know that he would be sent to Germany, he looked around for institutes offering training in German. “I could not take the time out to go to a regular or weekend class. Finally, I bought a self-help book and learnt a few phrases. That itself helped me a great deal during my stay in Germany. Now that I am back in Bangalore, I am now planning to enrol myself in a German language course,” he said.

The Bangalore University’s Department of Foreign Languages currently offers six – French, German, Japanese, Italian, Spanish, Korean. Two more – Chinese and Portuguese - are likely to be introduced in the next academic year.

Jyothi Venkatesh of the department said admissions had almost doubled. “In the previous academic year, we were forced to introduce an extra batch to accommodate all the students. Even our weekend batches are full. We have already begun to get enquiries regarding admissions for the coming year.”

Dr. Venkatesh said that the university’s Department of Foreign Languages gets enquiries about the courses from IPS officials, executives, corporates and students. “Just recently, a few students from an engineering college came to the department and requested us to reserve a few seats for them for the next academic year.”

The spokesperson from the Alliance Française de Bangalore said that the profile of those applying for the courses has changed drastically over the years. While 80 per cent were from colleges and schools earlier, now more and more corporates are interested in learning French. There are around 50 French companies in the city which look at foreign language education as a cross-cultural sensitivity training. “The career prospects are also good. There is a lot of money in translation jobs even after passing the higher intermediate level,” she said.

On offer at Alliance Francaise de Bangalore are one basic level course, two intermediate levels and two advanced level courses.

The Goethe-Institut, which operates under Max Mueller Bhavan, offers German language courses, apart from serving as a comprehensive information resource centre for those interested in Germany.

The institute offers six levels. The duration of each course is 12 weeks. Students can choose when they want to finish the course, depending on their capacity. With the Elementary course-one, one can acquire basic conversational skills and a vocabulary of 800-1,000 words, and understand simple spoken and written texts. At the end of Elementary course-two, one will be able to improve pronunciation, and reinforce knowledge of basic grammar after being introduced to more complex syntactical structures.

At the end of the third level, one can converse fluently and the vocabulary would have increased to about 2,500 words. This course prepares you for the Zertifikat Deutsch examination and marks the completion of the foundation course.

The institute offers two intermediate courses, which increases vocabulary, improves listening and reading comprehension skills, while preparing the student to appear for the Zentrale Mittelstufenprufung. The institute also offers a crash course if one needs to pick up German in a hurry. The duration of the course is six weeks, and Elementary 1 and 2 levels are taught. The Max Mueller Bhavan also arranges special courses to suit the requirements of company executives, institutions and corporate groups, where timings are flexible.

For details, contact the Department of Foreign Languages, Bangalore University, on 22961280; Alliance Francaise de Bangalore on 41231340, 41231344, 41231345; and Max Muller Bhavan on 25205305, 25205306, 25205307, 25205308.

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