Tamil medium students excel in engineering

Chennai: Saying that the performance of Tamil-medium students pursuing engineering is encouraging, Anna University Vice-Chancellor P. Mannar Jawahar said here on Wednesday that they would have access to communication labs for six semesters. Releasing the complete set of books for Tamil-medium students for the first semester in civil and mechanical engineering, Mr. Jawahar said 57 students out of 60 in a class of Tamil-medium students had scored over 90 per cent marks in the first tests. Their performance has shown that learning in the mother tongue led to better understanding of the subject. While English-medium students would use communication labs for two semesters, the course had been designed to enable the Tamil-medium students use the lab for six semesters, he said, adding this would benefit nearly 1,400 students this year, of whom 87 per cent were from rural areas. The second-semester books were being printed and would be ready in a month. The books for the third and fourth years would be ready by the next academic year. As Tamil-medium students have plenty of opportunities in the flourishing civil and automobile industries and in government jobs, they need not worry, said the Vice-Chancellor.