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An important goal of an ESL teacher is teaching and developing the ESL student’s English language communication skills to achieve speaking the English language easily and effectively. A commonly used English language practice is through teaching English slang and idioms for fluency improvement in conversation and development of natural communication in the ESL student. Some argue that teaching this type of informal English is unimportant and ineffective due to the nonliteral translation making learning the English language more difficult for the ESL student and possibly misconstrued by a native English receiver as improper or inappropriate. Generally, idioms vary according to social groups and people’s interests within a country’s culture, as well as, a difference in language translation. Therefore, an ESL student’s native language may significantly differ from an English language translation. Moreover, the translational difference between foreign language and English language opens a very large gap for misuse of English idioms which often results in misunderstanding and miscommunication. Furthermore, without the use of good judgement and development of judgmental skills, any person using an idiom in an inappropriate situation may be construed as being deliberately flippant or insubordinate. For example, if an English university professor asked an ESL university student for their overdue homework assignment and the ESL student replied with the idiom, “keep your pants on!”, the university professor may deem the ESL student’s response as irreverent. A proper English response communicated with precision would be more effective. Similar arguments can be made with the teaching and use of English slang. As well as idioms, slang is an informal use of the English language, has cultural differences and is commonly used to establish group identity within an ethnic group of people. Additionally, the use or inappropriate use of English slang may cause a foreigner to appear uneducated and inarticulate in an English native speaking country and may unknowingly stereotype their intended audience. For example, an ESL US university student uses previously taught African American social group slang as a means of English language communication and depending on their audience may not sound well-spoken or offend their audience particularly when speaking to an ethnic non-social group native English receiver. An additional example, approaching Barrack Obama (when he was the President of the US) considering him to be in an ethnic social group and saying, “Hey, my brotha whatchu doin bout the hood.” Again, the use of proper English would be better suited in this situation. Ultimately, teaching English communication and conversational fluidity skills is important for the ESL learner to easily and effectively communicate with the English language. However, without students’ being taught conversational judgment skills, awareness of country cultural differences and differences in language translation the teaching of slang and idioms is a considerable disadvantage to the ESL student. The teaching of proper English Language use does not further confuse the ESL learner with their learning of a new language, misinterpretations of proper English language use, less misconstrued interpretations to the native English speaking receiver and less stereotypical insults within a poorly identified ethnic social group.
