The Department of Germanic and Romance Studies is abuzz with the students queuing up for Four-Year Undergraduate Programme in German followed by French, Spanish and Italian.
The department has a number of 40 seats in each course making it a total of 160 and has already sold 2,320 application forms. The Foreign languages are a new field for Indian students to explore and teachers at the department opine that Indian students can do well in languages as they already are exposed to a minimum of three languages.
“Students have gradually developed interest in foreign languages over a period of time. They are finding ways of employment and none of our students so far has been unemployed.
“Earlier there was a notion that what do we do by knowing French or Italian in India but it's changed today. There is a lot of scope and students are getting attracted at school level since many schools across the city have foreign languages at middle school,” said Ena Panda, who teaches French at the Department.
A total of 697 students have already submitted the forms and the candidates will have to take an entrance examination on June 22 to make it for the course. Panda said the entrance will be divided on sections of Comprehension, Writing Skills, General Knowledge and Reasoning.
“Only 30 per cent of the entrance would be considered and a total of 70 per cent for admission would depend on the marks in Class 12,” she added and also highlighted the areas in the job market for foreign languages. Students get easily hired by MNCs as language experts and consultants, school teachers, translators, interpretors, tourist coordinators and also foreign embassys have a lot of space for them.
There are about 23 faculty members catering in this department and about 20 college of the Delhi University offer honours course in these four languages. At the Department, they also run a certificate course in Romanian and Portugese.
From this year, the following colleges would offer French, German, and Spanish as Discipline II courses. The Jesus and Mary College will have French and Spanish, the Delhi College of Arts and Commerce will have German and Spanish, Gargi College French and Ramanujan College too will have Frence.