Challenges of Teaching English in India

Abstract

Teaching English in India is not without challenges. But challenges are neither frustrating nor insurmountable. Teaching without challenges is dull and unproductive. Challenges encourage teachers to undertake action research. Results of action research can be applied to overcome challenges. The challenges range from the position of English in India, materials consumption and production, methods of teaching, blending, testing and evaluation, continuous professional development and training, learning styles, learner motivation, diverse socio-economic-linguistic backgrounds of learners, medium of instruction in schools, different school boards backgrounds, amount of exposure to English, the influence of L1, ill- trained English teachers in schools, English teachers with rich literature background in their degree programmes but without knowledge of applied linguistic areas, such as psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, contrastive analysis and error analysis, and to theoretical linguistics branches, such as phonetics and phonology, semantics, and syntax. There is a general tendency among important stakeholders of English language education to play the blame game neatly without anyone of them owning responsibility for the dismal performance of students in acquiring communicative competency. The present study is intended to be a reflective, inductive research on the basis of inputs from the teaching fraternity and aims at making it analytical and descriptive.