200 Part III: Teaching Skills Classes
Correctness in pronunciation is all to do with whether or not people under-
stand you easily. By demonstrating a range of accents students become more
accepting of this.
Coping with colloquial language
The extent to which you expose students to informal, colloquial speech may
well depend on what they eventually intend to do with their English. For
example, if you’re teaching business English to students who need to work
on an international scale and not necessarily with native speakers of English,
they probably won’t encounter too many colloquialisms. Compare that situ-
ation with Korean students preparing to attend a course at university in
Scotland. In the second case, the students are likely to face a constant stream
of colloquialisms so it’s worth them doing listening activities that get them
familiar with everyday speech.
Clichés, expressions that people use far too much so have no originality and
little meaning, may be one of the first things to deal with. Footballers are
great for this and here are a few classics.
✓ To be perfectly honest.
✓ At the end of the day.
✓ For the record.
✓ With all due respect.
✓ Lessons will be learned.
None of these expressions is likely to carry the main message in the sentence
or dialogue. Pointing this out, and having students learn to listen out for key
words and particular information, makes them feel better about knowing
what they can safely ignore.
Slang words are a little different because sometimes they’re essential to
understanding the message. For example, in the phrase,‘Give 20 quid to the
bloke in red’, both bloke and quid are slang words essential to the meaning.
So you may want to provide a glossary:
Quid: British English meaning one pound sterling (£1).
Bloke: British, Australian and New Zealand English meaning a man.
If students are likely to need the slang words in future, teach them how to use
these appropriately. If, on the other hand, the students only need the slang
words to understand this text, just provide a glossary for them and leave it at
that.
