BA students, teachers urge deferral of Linguistics in NEP syllabus
Linguistics, newly introduced in the Ability Enhancement Course (AEC) for BA first semester students under the New Education Policy (NEP) by Panjab University, has made the subject—already ‘Greek’ to many—even more incomprehensible.
A significant number of students were unable to perform well in the examination, particularly due to the inclusion of linguistic transcription, which they had never studied at school level. Both teachers and students have urged Panjab University to shift transcription-based content to later semesters, once students achieve a certain level of comfort with the subject. It is worth noting that previously, linguistics was offered only as an optional paper at the postgraduate level in English.
Prof Tajinder Kaur, head of the English Department at Ramgarhia Girls College, Ludhiana, shared that while framing the AEC syllabus under the New Education Policy, the difficulty level was overlooked, particularly for rural students who passed their senior secondary education from government schools and generally have limited exposure to the English language.
“Having taught in a city college in Ludhiana for three decades and having seen the academic profile of students, I can say it is not feasible to hammer phonetics into the minds of first-semester students. The change should begin at the school level—not as a sudden exposure, especially in a compulsory course. It must be such a shock for rural students, who make up three-fourths of those who appeared for the Semester 1 AEC examination last December. This portion needs to be removed from the syllabus to provide an equal footing to all students,” asserted the professor.
“The students, especially those in the arts stream, faced great difficulty in digesting the phonemic transcription, the listening and the speaking part, all through the semester. Requiring students who have only just begun learning the language to master phonetic transcription is pedagogically unjustifiable. Expecting such technical precision at an elementary stage imposes an undue cognitive burden. It would be more prudent for the university to postpone or simplify this component to align with students’ linguistic readiness,” expressed Prof Dinesh Kumar, head of the English Department, AS College, Khanna.
“Imposing linguistic transcription at the very outset, and that too for non-linguistics students, has created a steep learning curve, leading to underperformance. The gap is especially evident among students from non-English-medium backgrounds. The foundational topics such as sounds of English (vowels, consonants), phonetic symbols (basic IPA), syllable structure and stress patterns should begin from early schooling,” was still another teacher’s point of view.
“Out of a total of 30 marks, the five-mark question was based on linguistic transcription. Unfortunately, a large number of students were unable to attempt this question because they had never been introduced to linguistic transcription or phonetic symbols during their school education. Me and most of my friends were without teachers in school, what to talk of learning linguistic transcription. In our AEC, we needed 12 marks to pass, out of which 5 were eaten up by transcription, which passed over my head despite my teachers stuffing it in every period,” shared a student of a local college.
“The results of the BA First Semester under the New Education Policy (NEP) have fallen short of expectations, clearly indicating a disconnect between the syllabus and the learners’ capacity. A systemic revision of curriculum based on classroom realities and regional disparity is essential,” expressed Dr K.K. Sharma, Principal, AS College, Khanna.
A member of the Board of Studies in English, Panjab University, Chandigarh, when questioned about the difficulty caused by the inclusion of the linguistic section in the syllabus, commented that the transcription portion was worth only five marks.
Ludhiana