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Someone who teaches English as a foreign language in a TEFL or TESOL course may wonder if it is necessary to include slang and idioms in lesson plans. When considering this, it is important to remember that one of the main goals of teaching another language is to make sure students will be able to communicate effectively in their target language upon completion of the course. Learning slang, idioms, and other modern phraseology would help with this, preparing students for when they encounter such speech in the real world. However, this additional learning is not as important as the rest of the English class and its inclusion of basic vocabulary, grammar, and cultural information. The auxiliary nature of the information illustrates that learning slang is not one hundred percent necessary. However, it can still be incorporated as something informal and extra which can then serve as an enhancement to student learning. Exposure to slang, idioms, and the like would benefit students in a variety of ways. As native English language speakers tend to incorporate slang, idioms, and other usually untaught speech in daily use, students could become better listeners in social situations. In turn, knowing (and incorporating) slang and idioms would help student speech sound more natural and informal. Due to this effect, however, it would be necessary to consider student language goals to ensure any such “extra” learning would remain relevant to the student. For example, an adult studying business English for the purpose of working for a European company and a teenager learning basic English for American travel should be treated differently. In this example, the adult would benefit from business cliches and commonly heard phrases in the workplace whereas the student would benefit from slang and common speech used in casual interactions between people. After student goals are established, the question remains as to how one would incorporate such additional material in the classroom. Teachers have a variety of options in how to incorporate this extraneous learning. For example, the teacher could reserve one small section of the board for a word (or phrase) of the week. One week, she could write “what’s up?” and explain that it is a common and casual way of saying hello or how are you. The next week, the teacher could write another phrase and continue the process. Drilling the phrase of the week could be used to start the day and get the students thinking in English. At the end of each week, students could be asked to write down the phrase of the week and its meaning/usage. The student could receive extra credit if correct, but if incorrect, the student’s grades would not be negatively affected in any way. This way, the supplementary nature of slang and idioms being taught in class is reflected through its grading measures: knowing the information is beneficial, but not knowing the information would not negatively impact the student. Another learning method could come from an unexpected source. Meme speak is becoming more widespread, with seemingly nonsense words and expressions appearing frequently in social media. Each week, a different student could be asked to find an appropriate meme that relates to the topic being learned at the time (animals, school, emotions, colors, etc). After teacher approval, the meme can be shared with the class. While this could seem forced at times, it would be engaging for students to learn English through media they would likely be exposed to. This ungraded activity can be used similarly to how a picture would in an Engage activity. As previously mentioned, the inclusion of slang and idioms in a TEFL/TESOL environment is beneficial for students. Through the use of small and engaging activities, student speech would begin to sound closer to that of a native English speaker and student listening ability could be improved. If students come across slang, idioms, and other phraseology outside the classroom, they would not be taken completely off guard and would have some familiarity with the context and usage. Teachers can easily incorporate engaging side activities that do not distract from lessons but instead enhance student learning and overall make students more natural-sounding effective communicators.
