New Delhi: With the number of students and professionals keen in being a part of the mass communication industry, it is really surprising that the National Council of Education Research and Training's (NCERT) course in creative writing and translation, launched last year, has hardly located any takers.

Merely a small amount of schools in the city have opted for this course till date.

However, NCERT is not dejected with the response and is about to come up with a new book "Srijan" devoted to this course and those who have designed the curriculum hope that its popularity will soar with the launch of this book.

The course carries 100 marks in Boards and is optional; it is divided into three parts creative writing, media and translation.

The NCERT book is introduced for class XI only as of now is bilingual for translation from English to Hindi and vice versa.

Although students had a book published by CBSE in class XI, NCERT officials say the new book will make the course much more interesting.

The class XI curriculum will comprise of film reviews, news report writing, story and autobiographical writing, while in class XII students can learn about feature writing, scriptwriting, and poetry writing.

"The main purpose of the course is to spread awareness about creative writing. Students may not become writers after studying this course but they will surely be well-acquainted with what writing is all about. However, not many schools have knowledge about it till now," said Sandhya Sharma, reader, department of language, NCERT.

"Apart from helping students develop their writing skills, this course will also prepare them for the various entrance exams after school. The curriculum has been designed by a multitalented team of experts from universities, media institutes, theatre and authors," as per NCERT officials

"As there were no separate teachers for writing skills and translation, not many schools opted for this course. But even the regular English and Hindi teachers can take up this course, which would be really useful for media aspirants," said Ram Janma Sharma, professor and head, department of language, NCERT.