I did my schooling in vernacular medium and was pretty happy about my language knowledge. Then the time came and I did my UG and PG in English medium. As a part of job hunting, I attended interviews of call centers (this was the fashion to get the job in call centers, few yrs ago, and still it is !! ) Shockingly, I was rejected in each of call center interviews. And the reason behind rejection was simple-- Mother Tongue Influence. Those days were painful. I was seeing my co-students, who were getting lesser grades than I was getting, having Call Center's offer letter and I was still unemployed.
Meanwhile I got married and started working as a trainer in Software field. New marriage, new family, new responsibilities, new city to live in and hectic schedule to cope up. I was in Mumbai and used to travel 2 hrs one way to reach my job. But, I was happy that at least I got a job (!!!) At one particular time, I was teaching a batch of one student only, she was a wife of a higher official of Reliance Industries, in mid 30s and from Southern part of India. She has been to US for many years. While teaching her, I used to give examples in Hindi also, as I was afraid of my English grammar and was very much impressed by knowledge that she is a rich and foreign return person. She never argued about my teaching style and the batch finished successfully.
As a part of Training Institute's norms, each student fill a feedback form about the trainer. Now, my student gave a feedback about me that technically, trainer is very sound , no one can combat her. But her English is very much poor and she use local language while teaching. That stuck a chord in me... I was very angry firstly, that if she had issue with language, she should have told me before only , rather to complain afterwards. But afterwards, I realized that my fear of language was the biggest obstacle. I must improve in this field. And I started reading more in English, watching more in English. No doubt, my wast reading helped me a lot. And the improvement process goes on.
I had worked for more years as Trainer and never got this kind of complaint(or any other). Now, working in MNC and communicating properly with peers and boss. No one can make it out that I had language issue few years back. But still, when I meet my call center friends, I fell insecure.. ;) May be as they know that I have MTI ... Lol