Shillong,Mar.31: English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU) Vice Chancellor, Prof. E. Suresh Kumar, on Saturday announced that the Shillong Campus of the University will soon offer two new foreign language courses – Japanese and Chinese(Mandarin). He said these course will be launched within 3 months.
EFLU, Shillong Campus already offers certificate courses in German, Spanish, French and Russian language.
The Shillong campus of EFLU is currently housed inside the NEHU Campus.
Addressing journalists here, he informed that the reason for staring Japanese language course is in view of the immediate job market. As Japanese companies have already started setting up offices in India, he opined that people conversant in Japanese language would almost have a job ready for them, besides also getting opportunity to work in Japan. Same is the case for mandarin Chinese, he added.
He also informed that EFLU, Shillong campus would be conducting ‘tester session’ – session wherein a person would be fully oriented about the aspects of his/her choice of course. This will help students choose the right subject for their future growth.
He said professors from the university will be visiting schools and colleges across Meghalaya and North East to conduct such ‘tester sessions’.
He also announced that the university would be offering undergraduate degree in foreign languages from next academic session in the Shillong campus – which include all the six foreign languages.
Additionally, he said NEHU and EFLU have agreed in principle to have exchange of faculties. This will include collaboration in research wherein both the universities can jointly work on research projects, jointly guiding research scholars from either university, besides allowing students from both sides to choose one – two add-on courses that they can pursue from either university. This proposal, however, will take some time to materialize as it needs to be discussed and cleared by various councils from both the universities.
He also proposed to train teachers of Meghalaya in scientific and systematic manner. This, the VC said, has been appreciated by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma and the modalities will be worked out soon.
On the other hand, the university will also be launching USR – University Social Responsibility – in line with the CSR, under which it will develop mobile app and have free content for general masses in its website. These open resource education materials will be for 13 languages that include English, Hindi, Sanskrit and 10 foreign languages. Each language will have 30 – hour worth of proficiency course material.
Further, the university’s Shillong campus will adopt a nearby village on pilot basis which it will train in language skills so that the youths of the village can become employable or entrepreneurs.
The university will also come up with a world class language lab.
Revealing an approximate timeline to implement these projects, he said the proficiency courses will be launched in one month’s time while the adoption of the village will be done in similar time frame. Other programmes will take longer.
The VC also urged the students from North East to take advantage of the availability of a foreign language university in the region, as he plans to significantly raise their numbers in the coming years. Currently, Shillong campus has only 42 students from the region.
