English writing in indian education system and its implications: quantitative analysis of qualitative book reviews from www.amazon.in

Author: 
Vikas Gupta, IAS, Kausik K. Bhadra and Rhea Kapoor

On English writing skills amongst Indians, this study first critically reviews the role of major pan-Indian educational boards in imparting writing skills amongst the students and finds that the English writing curricula are not detailed, lack rigour and skills required in the contemporary world, andsubstantially differ across the educational boards. Using this finding, subsequently, we develop an approach and methodology to empirically examine the quality of writing from qualitative book reviews from www.amazon.in and found through t-test that the foreign review writers tend to use significantly higher average number of words and significantly lower average percentage share of ‘outside the content’ than Indian review writers while writing the book reviews. These results broadly revealed that writers from the rest of the world are able to write significantly better than Indian writers. These findings suggest considering reforming measuresin the education system in India to impart writing skills to students of various levels with different intellects.

Paper No: 
5630