Fulltime TESOL Lessons

Teaching slang and idiomsIf a teacher gives two hoots about making sure their students can have fluent conversations in english then they would be muppets if they overlooked the importance of idioms and slang. Using colloquialisms in a written text may look out of place but in the playground, the workplace and on the television they are commonplace. It follows that if a student’s aim is to converse with native speakers, understanding these peculiarities is essential. A good teacher will want to furnish their students both with what they need and what they wish to learn (Unit 19 ITTT coursebook), so they should incorporate slang phrases and idioms into their lessons. It is clear from teachers’ experience that students’ relish in being given these little insights and shortcuts into “real life” english, particularly from a native speaking teacher. For example, on the DVD accompanying The Practice of english Language Teaching by Jeremy Harmer, teacher Laura creates interest by explaining the use of "-ish" when it arose organically in one of her lessons. While not strictly slang, the reason the class was so taken with this was because students saw it as a useful insight which they would not have learned from a text book, highlighting the added value native english teachers can provide. If students complete the course but can not follow a television programme because it is littered with confusing idoms they can not decipher, then the teacher would have to question whether they had fulfilled their role. Learning a language should enable the student to gain access to new cultures, not feel like an outsider. Reading and listening to idioms in use can also be a useful lesson in understanding context which aids wider comprehension english. Consideration should be given to how a teacher furnishes their students with this information. An entire lesson spent talking about it "raining cats and dogs" could be overwhelming and confusing to the student. Learning them in context, when relevant, is a more sensible approach and more likely to lead to retention of the new information and its reproduction by the students. A lesson talking about the weather would be an ideal opportunity to introduce to the students the phrase “it’s raining cats and dogs”. Similarly, a piece on ordering food could be the time to inform students that english people often say "sarnie" as slang for "sandwich". Teacher Nada AbiSamra has researched the understanding and learning of idioms and concludes that "Idioms are easier to understand if given contextual support". (http://www.nadasisland.com/idioms/) Phrases can be introduced through listening excerpts, television soap operas, books and songs. While an entire lesson dedicated to slang or idioms may not be appropriate, an activate phase could be devoted to it. Idioms often come from cultural or historic events specific to a country. There are now a proliferation of dictionaries which provide explanations of idioms and their sources, such as The Penguin Dictinoary of english Idioms and the Oxford Dictionary of english Idioms. In addition there are various online dictionaries including, http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/, http://www.idiomsite.com/. Care needs to be taken in allowing access to these as some of the content may not be appropriate. Using such dicionaries provides interesting material, allowing students to look up phrases and then make up false meanings to play a "call my bluff" game. This encourages students to seek out language, be creative and also gives them an insight into english culture - they should get an idea from the number of idioms used for being drunk that the pub is key part of english life! Idioms and slang are taken for granted by native english speakers yet are the aspects learners will struggle to acquire from a text book or perhaps even a non-native english teacher. These parts of the language will help the student enhance their ownv ability to sound more natural when speaking english. A teacher who overlooks this and dimisses slang as "improper" language is doing his/her students a disservice.