English is no longer compulsory as the first preferred language in several important competitive examinations, schools, colleges and even entrance exams for Engineering and Medical. This is the case after the implementation of the New Education Policy.
The said competitive exams are being held in English, Hindi and 11 other regional languages. But, English continues to be the first choice for Indian students, as per a report in IANS. The number of students who are appearing for these exams in other regional languages and Hindi is much less.
The National Testing Agency (NTA) shared some statistics that depicted how, when it comes to important national entrance examinations such as the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), about 79 per cent of aspirants attempting the exam chose English as the medium of attempting the exam in the year 2021. About 13 per cent of the students preferred Hindi and eight per cent opted for other languages.
NTA conducts NEET, one of the most important exams in the country, and it said how the choice of language depends on the candidate and the NEET question paper will be available in 13 languages.
As per NTA, these 13 languages include English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
NTA also mentioned that it has to be mindful of how the choice of language depends on the location of the examination centre.
For NEET UG 2020 registration according to each language includes: 1.26 lakh candidates (79.08 per cent) opted for English; 2.04 lakh candidates (12.8 per cent) preferred Hindi; 1,624 candidates (0.1 per cent) chose Telugu, 5,328 candidates (0.33 per cent) chose Assamese; 59,055 candidates (3.7 per cent) opted for Gujarati; 6,258 candidates (0.39 per cent) chose Marathi; 17,101 candidates (1.07 per cent) chose Tamil; 36,593 candidates (2.29 per cent) preferred Bengali; 1,005 candidates (0.06 per cent) chose Kannada; 822 candidates (0.05 per cent) chose Odia; 1,977 candidates (0.12 per cent) chose Urdu, 1.47 lakh candidates (91.88 per cent) opted for English and Hindi.
As per CS Kandpal, popular academician, the school education that the students receive is the major reason behind the prefered language choice of aspirants being English.
"Our school education system is still based on English. This is the reason that after leaving school, when a student looks towards his future career or pursuing higher education, he or she chooses English for giving the next examination because while studying in school, he or she has studied various subjects in English only," says Kandpal, as quoted in a report by IANS.
When it comes to guidelines for choosing the language of the NEET 2022 exam pattern, those aspirants who opt for English will be given the test booklet in English only while those who opt for Hindi will be given a bilingual test booklet that is in both Hindi and English. Everyone who opts for any regional language will be given a bilingual test booklet.
If there is any inaccuracy when it comes to translation, what is mentioned in the English version of the test booklet prevails.
Out of the 326 civil servants who opted for a foundation course at Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), only eight attempted the exam in Hindi and 315 of them chose to attempt the exam in English. This was the case during the Civil Services examination in the year 2019.
In 2018, out of the 370 civil service trainees, eight attempted the exam in Hindi and 357 wrote it in English. In 2016, of the 377 aspirants, only 13 wrote their exam in Hindi.
