Indian Pronunciation

Many of my students do business with people in India or have Indian coworkers. As such, they often express frustration that they can’t understand Indian accents well. Here is one way I help these students.

Two Clear Goals

Whenever touching on this topic I have two goals:

A: help students enjoy exploring the accent
The frustration students feel doesn’t help anyone. Personally, I think accents are cool, and I try to convey that excitement to my students.

B: make students familiar with common patterns
The goal here is NOT to make my students use an Indian accent. Rather, it’s enough for students to have a better understanding of the accents they hear and be able to respond accordingly.

Using the Worksheet

There’s a lot of information here. It can be a bit overwhelming to throw all of this at students all at once. Instead, try using video clips of people speaking English that exemplify the patterns outlined here. It’s OK to cover just one sound each class or use the sheet as a reference.

In my case, I keep it handy as a reference whenever students have a question. Sometimes when they feel overwhelmed, it helps just to know that there are patterns they can learn.

Note: As I created this worksheet based on videos I watched on YouTube, I’m not charging for it.