Access, annual, apparent, areas, attributed, aware, bulk, cites, cites, decades, despite,

economic, economy, estimates, featured, federation, flexible, highlighted, highlights,

infrastructure, labour, nevertheless, over, percentage, percentage, policies, potential,
primary, publishes, require, reveals, revealed, sector, sector, sectors, sectors, shift,
somewhat, survey, under

Bovenkant formulier
Onderkant formuliBovenkant formulierIndia is rapidly losing one of its clear ________
advantages ____ China , with the number of Chinese able to speak English on par with
its neighbour and rival.

A new study _______ed by the British Council says China may already have more English
speakers than India , a remarkable development , given the language legacy of British
colonial rule in south Asia.

The study , English Next India by David Graddol , ______s that India is likely to find it
harder to compete with China , which already has better ______________ and a more
________ ______ market.

The study ________s that less than 5 per cent of the Indian population speaks English.
This would mean that by 2010 only about 55m people in India will be fluent English
speakers.

The report compares this with an ________ 20m new Chinese speakers of English each
year , a figure _________d to new education ________ that _______ English to be a
compulsory subject in China’s _______ schools. According to an earlier British Council
study , China had 200m English speakers in 1995.

In both countries exact figures are vague and those ____d often confuse the number of
students enrolled in English classes with real proficiency.

____________ , English Next India _________s the lack of English-medium education as

one main cause of India’s educational failure. It says this has hindered the spread of the
language _______ high demand for it from the employment ______ .

Recent studies have shown that India’s talent pool may be drying out. With nearly two-
thirds of India’s population _____ the age of 35 , the country has the world’s largest pool
of young people but is lagging competitively because of a gap in employer expectations
and realities.

A recent ______ of 150 Indian companies by the __________ of Indian Chambers of

Commerce and Industry and the World Bank ______ed that 64 per cent of Indian
employers are ________ to not-at-all satisfied with the quality of engineering graduate
skills , which most notably include English language skills.

Speaking at the launch of the report , Nandan Nilekani , a co-founder of Infosys , an

Indian IT company , _________ed the great _________ for the _______ in ______s such
as IT because its huge youth population is set to be the largest in the world in a few
______s .

But he also warned that this demographic dividend could turn into a demographic
disaster if English-language education is not _______d more prominently in India’s
development plan.

The success of India’s IT ______ has shown young Indians that the lack of English means
a lack of ______ to opportunity , Mr Nilekani said. The British Council study ____s
government figures to show that a big _____ from public schools to private schools in
India may be because parents are _____ of the importance of an English-medium
education. The 2009 ______ State Education Report says 26 per cent of children in rural
____s attend private school , a 9.6 __________ point increase since 2005.

Whether the Chinese population will surpass India’s number of English speakers as a
__________ of the population remains difficult to determine , as reports show progress in
some ______s and not in others. For example , the ____ of China’s growing
peacekeeping mission , which reflects its desire to become a big power , lacks one

economic over pu

necessity : good English skills.

Onderkant formulier