My research quest explores the realms of second language acquisition, specific to Indian learners, within the broader discipline of English Language Teaching. It stems from a question that plagues many a teacher in colleges and universities across India: why do a significant number of our undergraduate and postgraduate students struggle to use English accurately even after 15-17 years of exposure to the language?

Many of these students have been taught all other subjects, during primary and secondary education, through English, providing exposure to the language through immersion. However, much of their communication, both oral and written, seems to contain inaccuracies such as incorrect word order, run-on sentences, lack or incorrect use of articles and prepositions, incorrect tenses, and incorrect vocabulary for the intended meaning. These errors do not seem to improve significantly with more exposure to the language through common communication courses aimed to develop or enhance their academic and professional language skills, through the course of their studies.

Research in second language acquisition has demonstrated that second language learners acquire grammatical structures of a new language in predictable developmental stages comparable to their first language acquisition and that instruction aligned with these stages enhances learning. Even though most Indian languages share certain universal principles of grammar with English, they differ substantially from English—this is evident in the use of postpositions, the SOV word order, absence of articles, etc. Hence, it is plausible that the inaccuracies found in the utterances of Indian users of English is not the result of an inherent difficulty in understanding English grammar or the lack of adequate, comprehensible input during the initial learning stages, but a consequence of being taught the grammar of English through a pedagogical model not aligned with the grammar of their first language.

Exploring this plausibility forms the crux of my research.