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In today's society, the majority of the population can no longer differentiate formal and informal language. Although it is true that the majority uses the natural language daily as compared to the use of formal language, we need to ask 'why is that?'. What is the difference between formal and informal? How would we know that what we are using is either of the two? We would have to look at these examples and then compared both their structural difference. These 3 informal statements along with their formal versions, portray a certain situation but the difference is how we say/build a sentence. By taking factors such as personalization, complex and simple vocabulary, lesser and fuller sentences. We would be able to deduce which one is formal and informal. When using formal and informal language to tell a story, the differences would be quite noticeable. Informal statements: 1. I have not reviewed the results of the experiments. (As you can observe this statement includes the speaker making the statement more personal. Making the person speaking the subject of the sentence.) 2. The student has not gotten over his scare from the gun-shooting incident. (In this statement, it's quite easier to understand because of the simple vocabulary it has been constructed with.) Formal versions: 1. The results of the experiment have not been reviewed. (In this statement, we have removed the pronoun I thus changing the subject from the speaker to the direct object of the first. From active voice it became passive.) Similarly, in a formal conversation, we avoid to make ourselves the center of the topic and go for the common interest of the company that we are with. 2. The student has not recovered from his trauma caused by the gun-shooting incident. (Changing simple vocabularies by such as has not 'gotten over' to has not recovered, from scare to trauma. The speaker displays some knowledge regarding the topic by using different synonyms that have a more accurate meaning to match the topic of the conversation.) Formal situations require the use of formal language. We use it when writing our thesis, a university project, or emailing our boss or professor, and even during speeches in public. By using in such circumstances, this prohibits us from personalizing the language. Whereas, in contrast, the informal use of the language does not prescribe us to strictly follow language conventions, which allows for a more casual and natural conversation with communication receivers such as our friends, co-workers, bystanders among others. As a teacher, how and why should we use the formal and informal versions of the English language? Why should we even teach the difference in the first place? As a teacher, it is part of our roles that we can properly equip our students in their future careers. Knowing to the difference between the 2 can spell success or failure for them on attaining a good job, impressing their current employer with their presentation, or how to properly portray themselves both in and out of work. How we teach them depends on the level of students that we are teaching but the most important factor is that they have a good example to copy, that's us! By setting a good example of what formal language is, we can let our students learn from it receptively then apply it into their productive skills. At such point in time, they would have also known what the informal version sounds like since they will be hearing it almost every day.
