By-Amlan Baisya
Assistant Professor, Department of Literature and Languages, Easwari School of Liberal Arts, SRM University AP
In almost every communication class I teach, there is at least one student who speaks English fluently and is immediately admired by the rest of the class. The words come easily. The pronunciation sounds polished. The sentences move fast. Other students look at that person and say, “Sir, she speaks very good English,” or “Sir, I want to speak like him.” Soon, they become the “best” student in the class.
This admiration is not very hard to understand. In India, English fluency carries a certain social power. It opens doors, creates first impressions, and often decides who gets heard in classrooms, interviews and workplaces. But as a communication teacher, I have also learnt to be careful with the phrase “good English speaker.” It sounds harmless, but it hides many assumptions.
What do we really mean by a good English speaker? Someone who speaks without grammatical mistakes? Someone who has a neutral or foreign-sounding accent? Someone who speaks quickly? Someone who uses impressive vocabulary? Someone who never searches for words? Someone who is less influenced by Mother Tongue Influence (MTI)?
In many Indian classrooms, the “good English speaker” is often not the clearest thinker, the best listener or the most ethical communicator. The title usually goes to the person who sounds confident in English. This is where the problem begins. We often confuse fluency with intelligence. A student who speaks smoothly is assumed to be smart, modern and capable. A student who pauses, translates mentally from a regional language, or speaks with an accent is assumed to be weak. Is hesitation the absence of thought? Very often, hesitation is the visible labour of thinking across languages.
India is a multilingual country. Students do not come to the English classroom as blank slates. They come with Telugu, Bengali, Hindi, Tamil, Odia, Malayalam, Marathi, Assamese, Kannada, Urdu and many other languages in their minds. These languages carry memory, humour, emotion, family histories and ways of seeing the world. When such students speak English, they are not merely producing sentences. They are negotiating between languages. Yet our classrooms often reward only one kind of English: polished, urban, quick and accent-neutral. This creates a hierarchy. The student from an English-medium metropolitan background starts ahead. The student from a rural or regional-medium background begins with anxiety. Both may be equally intelligent, but only one looks immediately “confident.”
This is not just a language issue. It is a social issue. English in India has never been only a language. It is also a marker of class, schooling, geography and cultural capital. The student who speaks English fluently may have had years of exposure: English-speaking parents, private schooling, streaming platforms, books, social circles, and public spaces where English feels natural. Another student may be encountering English mainly as an academic and professional necessity. To judge both students by the same surface fluency is unfair.
A few semesters ago, during a presentation activity, a student spoke in broken English about his village, his family’s farming background, and the difficulty of explaining local agricultural practices in English. He paused several times. His grammar was imperfect. He used a Telugu word and then explained it carefully. By the usual standards, he was not the “best speaker” in the class. But his presentation had clarity, honesty and substance. Later, another student delivered a very polished presentation using familiar phrases: “In today’s fast-moving world,” “technology plays a vital role,” “we must think out of the box.” It sounded good, but said very little. The class praised the second student more quickly than the first.
The myth of the “good English speaker” also damages students emotionally. Many students enter communication classes already carrying fear. They are afraid classmates will laugh at their accent. They are afraid of saying “wrong English.” They are afraid that one grammatical error will expose their background. This fear makes them silent. And then silence is mistaken for lack of ability.
Teachers must break this cycle.
The first step is to stop treating accent as a moral failure. An Indian student does not need to sound American or British to speak English well. English is no longer owned by one nation, one accent or one class. It is a global language shaped by its users. Indian English, with its many regional rhythms, is not a defective version of English. It is a living form of English.
This does not mean grammar and pronunciation do not matter. They do. Clarity matters. Accuracy matters. Professional communication matters. But these should be taught as tools, not weapons. Correction should help students communicate better, not make them feel small.
The second step is to value multilingual intelligence. A student who can think in one language, translate into another, and speak before a class is doing complex intellectual work. Code-switching is not always laziness. Sometimes it is precision. Some words carry cultural meanings that English cannot easily hold. When students bring regional expressions into English discussions, the classroom becomes richer, not poorer.
The third step is to redefine fluency. Fluency should not mean speed. Some of the worst communication happens quickly. A person can speak fast and still be vague, careless or manipulative. Real fluency is the ability to move meaning from one mind to another with clarity and sensitivity. Sometimes that requires speaking slowly.
In interviews and workplaces too, we need to rethink our assumptions. Candidates are often judged within the first few seconds of speaking. A polished accent can hide
weak thinking. A hesitant voice can carry strong insight. If organisations want real talent, they must learn to listen beyond surface English.
The obsession with the “good English speaker” also affects the purpose of education. Students begin to believe that English is mainly a performance of status. They want to sound impressive, not necessarily communicate well. They memorise phrases, imitate accents, and avoid original thoughts because original thoughts are risky. It is safer to say something familiar in polished English than something meaningful in imperfect English.
I often tell my students that English is not a certificate of superiority. It is a bridge. A bridge is useful only when people can cross it. If English becomes a wall that separates the fluent from the hesitant, the privileged from the struggling, then we have failed as teachers. The myth of the “good English speaker” survives because it is convenient. It allows us to judge quickly. It makes fluency look like merit and hesitation look like weakness. But classrooms should resist such easy judgments.
The student who pauses before speaking may still have the best idea in the room. The student with a regional accent may still be the clearest communicator. The student who says “sorry, I will try again” may be showing more courage than the one who speaks flawlessly without saying anything new. So perhaps we should stop asking students to become “good English speakers” in the narrow sense. We should ask them to become thoughtful communicators in English.
That is harder. It is also far more important.
