According to a survey, as many as 97 per cent engineering graduates in the country cannot speak English, which is required for jobs in corporate sales or business consulting, revealed a new survey.
Engineering remains one of the most popular choices among aspirants for under-graduate courses. The survey also revealed that 51 per cent of them are not employable based on their spoken English scores and of the 6 lakh engineers that graduate annually, only 2.9 per cent candidates are the fluent while speaking English. Pronunciation and fluency were found to be major barriers in effective spoken English.
The survey also showed that while Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Bangalore do the best in speaking in English, engineering students in Hyderabad and Chennai need maximum improvement.
The survey, conducted by Aspiring Minds, an employability evaluation and certification company, took into account almost 30,000 students across 500 engineering colleges in the country.
The findings were based on the results of students who took a test on an automated tool that measures listening and speaking skills. According to the results, engineers show larger gap in elements of spoken English, pronunciation and fluency. Only 6.8 per cent engineers show ability to speak or respond spontaneously. These candidates can speak fluently, with good pronunciation and proper sentence construction. Academicians agree that not being fluent in English has posed a hurdle to many during recruitment. “Since the basis of the admission in engineering colleges is limited to maths and science, English skills which are missing right from school are not tested nor honed,” said GT Thampi, principal, Thadomal Sahani Engineering College (TSEC), Bandra.
“Recruiters and HR managers around the world report that candidates with English skills above the local average stand out from the crowd and garner 30-50 per cent higher salaries than similarly-qualified candidates without English skills,” said Varun Aggarwal, co-founder of Aspiring minds.