GNDU fiasco: Grammar mistakes in English paper
Divya Sharma
Tribune News Service
Amritsar, January 4
In an ironic situation, a paper meant to test the English ability of students under Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU) was found abuzz with grammatical errors.
The Functional English paper, attempted by the students of BA and B.SC third semester on January 1, had not only grammatical mistakes, but also a repeat of a few questions from the last year question paper.
The faults were in Section-A, meant to judge the grammar proficiency of the students.
One such question, wherein the change of narration has been sought, has a verb missing. It reads — Surkhab said, “Please to canteen.”
Another question with an error reads — The philosopher discovered, “The earth revolves round the sun.” ‘Round’ in this sentence should have been ‘around’.
One more question — Sham goes to morning walk daily — should have had ‘for’ replacing ‘to’.
Several students have expressed displeasure and a few of them vent their anger through social media. A student, seeking anonymity, said, “The repetition of questions is okay, but the grammatical errors are shocking. How silly it is that a paper meant to judge the ability of students is not up to the mark.”
This is not for the first time that something like this has happened. Earlier, too, in M.Sc (Mathematics), Semester-1, a section of the question paper was missing. The matter was resolved. Also the students of BSc (Economics), Semester- V, were not provided with question papers in Hindi and Punjabi languages. Later, the question papers were provided through e-mail.
When contacted, GNDU Vice-Chancellor Prof Jaspal Singh Sandhu said, “These are simple printing errors. Around 1,100 papers are being printed. The university does not supervise printing. We will look into it.”
