I was speaking to a bright young founder recently. He had built a useful product, understood his customers and had raised a small round from an angel syndicate. But when he had to explain his business in English, his confidence disappeared. His written answers were clear. His spoken sentences were hesitant, translated from his mother tongue, and full of avoidable grammatical errors.
This is not because Indian students are less intelligent or less hardworking. Indian students struggle with English mainly because they learn it as a school subject rather than as a living language: they have uneven exposure, are taught through translation and grammar exercises, rarely get safe opportunities to speak, and carry the sound and sentence structure of their first language into English. Our multilingual society makes the problem harder, but our examination system makes it much worse.
I have seen the same pattern in students, patients and founders. They often understand far more English than they can produce. Their receptive vocabulary is larger than their speaking vocabulary. They can read a passage, write an answer and recognise a word, but freeze when asked to explain an idea aloud.
That distinction matters. The problem is not simply “poor English”. It is a gap between knowing English and using English.
Two students, two very different journeys
Consider two broad types of Indian students I have encountered. I am not describing two named individuals, but two recurring paths.
The first student has heard English since childhood. A parent speaks it at home. The child watches cartoons and films in English, reads storybooks, attends an English-medium school and hears adults using the language for ordinary conversation. The child makes mistakes, of course, but the mistakes are corrected in the course of living. English is associated with play, curiosity and communication.
The second student begins learning English seriously only after entering primary school. At home, the family speaks Marathi, Hindi, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada or another Indian language. The school may call itself English-medium, but the teacher explains the lesson in the local language, dictates answers and prepares children for written examinations. English appears mainly in textbooks. Speaking it feels like performing in public.
Both students may be equally intelligent. Both may study for the same number of hours. Yet the first has accumulated thousands of informal hours of exposure, while the second has accumulated rules, translations and fear.
| What the student experiences | Likely result |
|---|---|
| English is heard at home and used for ordinary conversation | More natural sentence formation and greater speaking confidence |
| English is encountered mainly in textbooks and examinations | Better written recall than spontaneous speaking |
| Teachers explain every sentence by translating it | Dependence on the mother tongue while thinking and speaking |
| Mistakes are mocked by classmates or corrected harshly | Silence, hesitation and avoidance of unfamiliar words |
| The student reads, listens and speaks regularly | A larger productive vocabulary and better fluency |
This is why the usual advice—“just improve your vocabulary”—is inadequate. Vocabulary is not a bag of words. A student may know the word “negotiate” and still be unable to say, “I negotiated a lower price with the supplier yesterday.” Knowing a word means knowing its sound, its grammar, its usual companions and the situations in which it is appropriate.
Why Indian students struggle with English: the first language follows them
Every Indian student already speaks at least one language fluently. That is an advantage, not a defect. But the first language becomes the template through which English is understood.
Indian languages differ from English in word order, verb forms, sounds and rhythm. A student may first construct a sentence in Hindi or Malayalam and then translate it into English. The result is understandable but unnatural:
“I am having two brothers.”
“I was going there yesterday.”
“Please revert back.”
“Discuss about the issue.”
“I am knowing the answer.”
These sentences are not random carelessness. They are logical within the speaker’s existing language habits. The student is trying to transfer a familiar structure into a new language.
Grammar becomes especially confusing when English makes distinctions that the student’s first language does not make in the same way. The difference between “I went” and “I have gone”, or between “I go to college every day” and “I am going to college today”, may seem obvious to a fluent speaker. It is not obvious to someone whose home language expresses time differently.
Subject-verb agreement causes similar trouble. Why is it “I have” but “she has”? Why is it “Does he have?” rather than “Does he has?” A child who has learned English through repeated exposure gradually absorbs these patterns. A child who has learned through rules may remember the rule during an exercise and forget it during a conversation.
I do not think grammar should be ignored. Clear grammar helps a person communicate accurately. But grammar must be taught as a pattern used in real sentences, not as a list of punishable errors. Asking a child to memorise the twelve tenses without giving that child reasons to speak is like teaching swimming by making someone memorise the names of strokes.
Pronunciation is not the same as intelligence
Pronunciation is another source of needless embarrassment. Indian languages do not contain all the sounds used in English, and different regions create different difficulties. Some students struggle with “v” and “w”. Some confuse “z” and “j”. Others find the short vowel in “apple” difficult, or pronounce “here” as “hair”. Word stress is often misplaced because Indian languages tend to use a different rhythm from English.
There is no single Indian accent. A Punjabi speaker, a Bengali speaker, a Tamil speaker and a Marathi speaker may all speak English differently. Many of these accents are perfectly intelligible. The aim should not be to erase Indian identity or imitate an American or British accent. The aim should be intelligibility: can another person understand the speaker without repeatedly asking for clarification?
This distinction is important because “accent neutralisation” is often sold as if an Indian accent were a disease. It is not. A student should learn to distinguish “ship” from “sheep” if that distinction matters in context. A doctor should pronounce a medicine clearly. A founder should be understood by a customer. But nobody needs to sound like a television newsreader from London.
English is a tool for communication, not a certificate of intelligence. A strong accent is not a problem if the listener can understand you; silence caused by fear of the accent is the real problem.
Pronunciation improves through listening and repeated speaking, not through occasional lectures about phonetics. A student must hear the difference, produce the sound, receive correction and try again. This is unglamorous work. There is no shortcut.
Why students write better than they speak
Indian education rewards written performance. A student can prepare an answer, memorise useful phrases and reproduce them in an examination. Speaking gives no such protection. The sentence has to be formed in real time, while the student is also worrying about grammar, pronunciation and the judgment of the listener.
I have met students who write a polished paragraph but cannot explain it aloud. This is not unusual. Writing allows revision. Speaking exposes every hesitation immediately.
The examination system quietly teaches students that correctness matters more than communication. A wrong preposition may lose marks. An incomplete answer may be penalised. But in real life, a person who communicates a useful idea with imperfect grammar is often more effective than someone who knows every grammatical rule but says nothing.
This is one reason I have written about why Indian students cheat in exams. When marks become the main measure of learning, students optimise for marks. English then becomes another subject to pass rather than a capability to build.
The irony is that spoken English is often most important precisely when no examination is available: during a job interview, a presentation, a customer call, a medical consultation or a conversation with a potential investor.
The fear of making a mistake is more damaging than the mistake
In my IVF clinic, patients sometimes arrive with a long list of questions but ask only one or two. They are worried that they will sound foolish. Students behave in the same way with English. They know what they want to say, but they remain quiet because they are afraid of being laughed at.
This fear is not irrational. Indian classrooms can be unforgiving. A child who mispronounces a word may be mocked by classmates. A teacher may interrupt every sentence to correct an error. Parents may compare the child with a cousin who speaks fluent English. The child learns an unfortunate lesson: speaking creates risk; silence is safe.
A founder I backed once told me that he practised his pitch alone for weeks but avoided speaking to potential customers. His English was not the main obstacle. His fear of being judged was. Once he began having short, repeated conversations with customers, his fluency improved because he had a reason to speak and feedback that mattered.
Students need the same environment. They should be allowed to speak imperfectly, discover what they cannot express, and try again. A teacher who corrects every error immediately may be demonstrating knowledge but reducing learning. Correction has to be selective. If the meaning is clear, let the student finish. Then correct one or two patterns that will make the next conversation better.
Translation helps at the beginning, but traps students later
Translation is not always bad. When a child encounters a completely unfamiliar word, a picture, gesture or translation can make the meaning clear. The problem begins when translation remains the only route to understanding.
If a student must first think in Hindi, translate into English, check the grammar and then speak, conversation becomes painfully slow. Fluent speakers do not translate every sentence. They retrieve familiar phrases directly.
Teachers should gradually move students from translation to context. Instead of teaching “borrow” as a word paired with its equivalent in another language, the teacher can create a small situation:
“I forgot my pen. Can I borrow yours?”
“I borrowed a book from the library.”
“I returned the book I borrowed.”
The student learns the word, its grammar and its natural companions together. This is how language becomes usable.
The same principle applies to idioms and tone. An Indian student may understand the words in “That’s interesting” but miss that the speaker is being sarcastic. American television provides useful exposure to some accents, but it cannot substitute for real interaction with people from different regions and backgrounds.
English-medium schooling is not English education
We have created a large market for English-medium schools, but the label often hides the reality. A school may have English textbooks, English written on the notice board and English in the timetable, while the actual teaching happens mostly in the local language. There is nothing wrong with teaching in a regional language. The problem is pretending that the child has received an English education when the child has not had meaningful exposure to spoken English.
I would rather see a good school teach science clearly in Marathi or Hindi and provide serious, regular English practice than see a weak school teach every subject in broken English. Children need strong conceptual understanding and strong language skills. They should not be forced to sacrifice one for the other.
Parents also need to be realistic. Speaking English at home is useful only if the parent can speak it comfortably and warmly. A parent who turns every conversation into a correction session may create anxiety rather than fluency. Reading a story together, discussing a picture or asking a child to describe the day is more useful than demanding memorised speeches.
For parents thinking about education and careers, my free guide to career counselling for Indian students makes a broader point: children need opportunities to discover their strengths, not just pressure to imitate the strongest student in the class. English is one capability among many. It should open doors, not become a measure of a child’s worth.
What actually helps a student improve?
Improvement comes from a sequence of ordinary activities repeated consistently. I would put them in this order:
- Listen to understandable English every day. The material should be slightly above the student’s current level, not so difficult that every sentence becomes a translation exercise. Short interviews, stories, audiobooks and conversations are useful.
- Read for meaning, not only for examinations. A child who reads a story wants to know what happens next. That motivation is more powerful than memorising a passage. Begin with simple books and increase the difficulty gradually.
- Speak in small, low-risk situations. A two-minute description of the day is better than an occasional five-minute speech delivered under pressure. Pair work is often less intimidating than speaking before the entire class.
- Record and listen to yourself. Students are often unaware of repeated errors until they hear themselves. Recording also makes progress visible. The first recording may be painful; the tenth usually sounds better.
- Correct recurring errors selectively. If a student repeatedly says “I am knowing”, teach that pattern properly. Do not interrupt every sentence to correct an accent, a preposition and a tense at once.
- Use English for a real purpose. Explain a product, interview a grandparent, write an email, give directions or teach a younger child a game. Communication becomes easier when there is something worth communicating.
Technology can help, but it cannot remove the need for practice. An AI tutor can give a student a patient conversation partner and immediate feedback. I have written about free AI tutors for Indian students, and I see genuine promise in them. But a student who only completes app exercises may become good at completing app exercises. The test is whether the student can explain an idea to another human being.
Schools should measure communication, not just memory
We cannot expect students to learn spoken English if schools never assess it. What gets examined gets taught.
A school need not conduct elaborate oral examinations. It can ask students to explain a picture, summarise a story, describe an experiment, interview a classmate or present a simple argument. Assessment should reward clarity and improvement, not only flawless grammar. A shy child should not be punished for having an accent. A confident child should not receive full marks for speaking nonsense fluently.
Teachers need support too. Many English teachers were themselves trained through grammar and translation. Asking them to create lively speaking classrooms without training or time is unfair. They need practical methods, good audio material and permission to move beyond the textbook.
There is also a case for separating language learning from language prestige. English remains useful in higher education, medicine, technology, business and international communication. But treating English as superior to Indian languages is both intellectually lazy and socially damaging. A child can be proud of Kannada and still want to speak English well. Multilingualism should be an asset, not a hierarchy.
The investor’s lesson: fluency is built through repeated small bets
As an angel investor, I have learned that founders rarely become persuasive after one dramatic intervention. They improve through many small conversations: one customer call, one product demonstration, one difficult question from an investor, one revised explanation.
Language learning works the same way. Students and parents often search for the perfect course, the perfect app or the perfect accent teacher. These may help, but the central requirement is less exciting: repeated use with useful feedback over time.
The student who speaks for ten minutes every day will usually progress further than the student who attends a three-hour workshop once a month. The founder who explains the product to ten customers will become clearer than the founder who rewrites the pitch deck twenty times. Exposure creates fluency; performance anxiety destroys it.
I am also wary of promising quick results. A student may learn a hundred new words in a week and still struggle in conversation. That is normal. Fluency is not the accumulation of vocabulary alone. It is the ability to retrieve language under pressure, understand another person’s meaning and repair a sentence when it goes wrong.
The most useful English class is not the one in which the teacher speaks perfect English. It is the one in which every student gets enough time to speak, listen, make mistakes and try again.
So why do Indian students struggle with English?
They struggle because India asks one language to perform several contradictory roles. English is a school subject, a status marker, a route to employment, a language of administration and a bridge between people who do not share a mother tongue. Yet millions of students encounter it mainly through memorisation and translation.
Our students are not short of intelligence. They are short of sustained exposure, patient practice and safe opportunities to speak. Regional language interference explains some errors. Poor teaching explains many more. Fear of ridicule explains the silence that follows.
I would not begin by demanding that every child speak English at home or imitate a foreign accent. I would begin with one simple change: every student should have a daily opportunity to use English for a meaningful purpose, without being humiliated for making an error.
When I meet a young founder who says, “My English is weak,” I now listen more carefully. Often the person has enough English to succeed but has been trained to apologise before speaking. My job is not to make that founder sound British or American. It is to help the founder explain a real idea clearly enough that a customer, employee or investor can understand it.
That is the standard I would like our schools to adopt. Not perfect English. Useful English, spoken without fear.