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Although I am far from fluent, in my experience so far learning a foreign language, what excites me most as a learner and hopeful speaker is someday being able to follow my favorite stories, in any format. Being a learner of Japanese, whenever I watch the appropriate Japanese animation or story from a book, I am entranced by the freshness and liveliness of the language used (that I can understand), which is often comprised of slang and idiomatic expressions. I believe beautiful expressions and poetical writings are also enticing to students, but by studying authentic, appropriate sources that contain unsterile, lively language that students often want to learn the most, real educational progress can be gained. But how best should students learn slang and idioms? I believe there are several approaches, but some prerequisites must be met. First, I believe that when attempting to teach slang and idioms, students should be at a high intermediate or advanced level, so they have the fundamental skills and knowledge to start shortening and flowering up their speech. Secondly, if sources are used, they must always be authentic sources, hopefully modern or at least still relevant to modernity, which will be of interest to the students. I am not sure if they exist, but if there are unauthentic sources for students to learn slang and idioms, by merit of the source being produced expressly for their use the students will most likely not take the content of the source seriously, as they want the "proof" that the language they will be learning is relevant and perhaps even "cool". As for what should be used as authentic sources for slang and idioms, relevant music, visual media, and anything that reals more authentic and real over things in the textbook, which can feel dry and not very applicable to real life. Concerning actually teaching slang and idioms, it is largely common sense. For slang, students must be taught the forms, because speaking in slang usually only requires some shortening adjustments to forms. For idioms, they must be taught individually, although as students advance emphasis should be placed on using context to figure out the meanings of idioms (and unknown words in general). Also encouraging students to do their own studies of cultural properties and such that they like in the language they are learning is important. Now, students can practice slang and idioms together, of course, but I believe to truly understand the flow and soul of slang speech and idiomatic phrases, students must study abroad or otherwise go to the area of the world where the language they want to learn is spoken as the L1. To put it another way, I believe students of the language will not be able to use slang and idioms themselves to their full meaning without having had growing up hearing those same phrases, from people from the proper background and using the proper dialect/pronunciation. Therefore, students should go abroad, hear the slang/idioms being used only from native speakers, and then slowly experiment and do their own trial runs of the language to ensure they are speaking correctly.
