This study addresses an important problem in English pedagogy in one Outer Circle context, that of India, in that it investigates the match between the stated goals of English teaching in the policy documents and their implementation in actual curriculum, teaching and testing practices. In order to achieve a better match, the study suggests more use of local sample texts in teaching materials. In turn, in order to test the acceptability of local norms, the study describes the results of testing the acceptability of a number of unique Indian English items by several groups of "educated" Indian English users by means of a questionnaire. (Contains 2 tables.)