5 Common English grammar challenges for Indian students
Be it an English exam at school, a conversation or English comprehension, Indian students face some grammar issues that seem common across the country. As parent, it may be difficult for you to tackle your child’s daily battle with the English language. We have drawn up a brief list of challenges most Indian students have with English grammar. We have also suggested how they might be overcome.
#1 Direct translation from the mother tongue
Problem: Many Indians, even adults, do not say ‘I am Ramesh’. They introduce themselves as ‘Myself Ramesh’. Similarly, instead of saying ‘I am not feeling well’, they may say ‘my health is not fine’. This is the result of direct translation from Hindi and related languages such as Gujarati, Bhojpuri and Marathi. Every region of India has a set of strange sentences floating about. The mental translation is sometimes so close to the original that even another Indian with a different mother tongue may be confused about what the speaker means.
Solution: Translation is an exercise to be tackled only when the student has a grasp over basic grammatical concepts of English. Encourage your child to think in English when speaking or writing in it. Discourage them from resorting to the mother tongue wherever they find it difficult to express themselves in English.
#2 Difficulty in managing pronouns and verbs
Problem: Most Indian, Latin and Germanic languages have multiple pronouns and verbs to express familiarity or show respect. The degree of respect is automatically expressed when we move from ‘aap’ to ‘tum’ to ‘tu’. The verbs change accordingly. This structure eliminates the need to say ‘may I’, ‘please’, ‘kindly’ etc. because the respect is already in-built.
Solution: Explain with examples that not using these extra respect-indicating terms in English may make your child sound unintentionally rude or demanding.
#3 Cultural context attached to certain words in Indian languages
Problem: Let’s take the curious case of ‘sorry’. In many Indian languages, we say ‘I have made a mistake’ to indicate we are sorry. But in English, ‘sorry’ expresses repentance for the mistake and ‘excuse me’ indicates a requirement to judge an action or a sentence again. The latter is used in a comparatively less serious context. Understanding this degree of importance according to context varies from language to language.
Solution: Introduce your kids to short YouTube videos that explain English language usage according to context through animation or short videos. These are entertaining, so they will remember the usage, and a video is great for illustrating the context.
#4 Limited English vocabulary due to lack of practice
Problem: Students get to know a second language only in class, as a text book subject. Being able to read English on currency notes, app menu or website language does not help, because students do not associate these with everyday usage. So they construct lop-sided sentences because they just don’t have the word for it.
Solution: Grammar is the backbone of a living language. Speaking, reading and writing the language is the only way to actually see the grammatical rules at work, and understand what they signify. Unfortunately, this has no shortcut. Get your kid to speak in English and read more. If they don’t want to start with books, get them to read the English newspaper daily. Then pick up a news item and discuss it with them in English. They will get into practice soon.
#5 Lack of exposure to non-Indian English
Problem: An Indian child grows up speaking the English taught to him or her by parents and teachers. This may be an ‘Indianised’ version, complete with all the grammar challenges we mentioned above. You may be making the same mistakes out of habit, or because you are busy with something else while talking to your child. Though you do not want it, they will pick up the mistakes and use them.
Solution: Expose kids to English songs, movies and story books since childhood. When they see, hear and read how native English speakers interact, they will get the natural flow of the language. It’s the best way to bring grammar lessons to life.