In the case of German, even the syllabus has been reviewed to accommodate CBSE’s new methodology. Now students of Class 6,7,8,9, and 11, will take a formal examination of 50 marks in the language. The rest 50 per cent will be divided among periodic tests and projects, officials said.

It has been seven years now that DPS Vasant Kunj student Prakhya Bhatnagar has been learning German but she still faltered when she went to Germany this year on an exchange programme.

“It took me two days to grasp the accent and then the slang was different. It was like using Shakespearean English in today’s world. It would be archaic,” she says. “We were quite ashamed of telling people that we used those old books. If you are travelling, nobody would like to look at your essays. They’d want to talk to you.”

Prakhya’s younger sister Prashasti, who is in Class 8, is also learning German. When she prepares for her coursework, rehearses her dialogues and listens to the CDs, Prakhya can tell her sister is learning the language better than her. “We can talk in German with each other now. At her level in my time, I couldn’t speak the language as well,” Prakhya says.