Survey tells the language students prefer

HYDERABAD: Brainly, an online learning platform, surveyed its Indian user base to find out the most prevalent and preferred languages amongst students. The survey, called ‘Popular foreign languages considered by Indian students’, registered 3,206 responses and gave in-depth insights into the increasing demand for native and non-native languages.

86% of Brainly respondents belonged to an English-medium school while only 8.5% had Hindi as their medium of learning. The remaining 5.5% learned in other languages including vernaculars. Moreover, 53.7% of Brainly users had English as their secondary language at school, 35.3% had Hindi, and 11% of users had vernaculars. In terms of foreign languages, French was taught in 24.8% of schools, followed by German (10.7%), Spanish (8.1%), and Mandarin (4.1%). Approx. three-fourth of schools, at 72.4%, also taught international languages other than these.

The survey further revealed that choosing a tertiary language was mandatory in 55.5% of schools, of which regional languages were imperative across 46.7% of schools. However, there was no such compulsion in the rest 44.5% of schools. A quarter of schools have mandated choosing a foreign language.