HYDERABAD: With the State government opening up to do business with other countries, labour force with knowledge of Korean and Japanese languages is in high demand, said English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) vice-chancellor Prof. E Suresh Kumar. In this light the vice-chancellor has also written to his counterpart in Osmania University.
“A number of Japanese companies are setting up shop in the State and being tech companies they will need Indian BTech graduates with working knowledge of Japanese. This (knowledge of Japanese) will boost their pay scale by three to four-fold,” he said. The vice-chancellor has proposed that engineering students of OU in the third or final year take up the Japanese classes at EFLU for a couple of hours after classes. “Both varsities are within a couple of kilometres of each other so students will not even waste time commuting,” he said.
EFLU in its golden jubilee year plans to start a new initiative of skilling students while studying. The VC said that students would undertake a formal job at an organisation for a semester during their academic course. This, he said would be a diversion from the usual but would be an opportunity for students to explore beyond teaching and research. The varsity’s golden jubilee inaugural function will be held on November 16 where it plans to launch an app for spoken English and English pronunciation.
The unique feature of the app is that it will teach pronunciation not in British or American English but in localised English. Armed with graded autonomy, the university is also planning to rope in faculty from foreign countries.
“As of now two foreign faculty will be joining us. This is an opportunity to get expertise from outside the country which is an outcome of getting more autonomy,” he said and added that now they can start new centres and courses without prior intimation to UGC and MHRD.
In addition, the university’s 30-hour proficiency course in oral skill in open educational resources in English, Hindi and Sanskrit and 10 foreign languages will soon be available free of cost. It has also decided to launch seven online international journals.