Higher Education in India: Fallacies of Creative and Critical Thinking in English Studies.

End semester examination answer scripts, research papers or assignments submitted by college students and researchers in English reveal serious lags in analytical approaches or critical and creative thinking skills in English language in higher education. Students are found guilty of plagiarism and copyright infringements, tarnishing the image of English studies in India at graduate, postgraduate and PhD levels. Professors waste their time in paraphrasing, driving students towards mugging up sans any attempts at producing inferences beyond prescribed texts. The texts are translated casually (often through second or third person accounts) in vernaculars and the entire focus is reduced to catering to the examinations. The present paper strings together opinions given by experts, researchers, professors, and scholars who have pointed out the fallacies in approaches adopted towards literature studies and researches in English language teaching. The paper argues that the directives used in literature question papers are misconstrued by teachers and students alike and have not been instrumental in evoking or nurturing original thoughts and ideas. The inclusion of comprehension, application, analysis and evaluation in literary studies would make it more meaningful, constructive and permanent since examinations are the main drive that leads students towards intensive studies. The paper concludes with a set of sample questions based upon Bloom's revised taxonomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]