[kpan217]

Hi! I'm trying to brainstorm ways to teach slang to my high schoolers, but am not coming up with any ideas that sound like any fun. Has anyone taught slang in their classes before and found a method that worked all right? Oooor, has anyone not taught it before but have a good idea about how to do it? Thanks a lot!

[mesmark]

What kinds of slang are you planning on teaching?

I generally stay away from slang because the students generally sound ridiculous unless they can really use the language.

'Wow, man. That is wicked-o."

** note there are no exclamation marks and read it like a computer. **

[Grant Barrett]

I get this question a lot and my best advice is to not teach slang, but teach about slang. First define slang for them in a broad way using multiple non-dictionary sources, since the dictionaries are too brief on the subject of slang, except perhaps in the frontmatter, and explanations of what slang is vary greatly. Then choose a couple of slang words that are homographs, homophones, or polysemes of other, regular words. "Cool" is always a good one. Talk about how the slang meanings vary from the Standard English ones, about how words change over time, and how we have different registers of English.

Another way to teach about slang is to have your students keep a slang journal for a few weeks. They would record the slang word, where and when they heard it or read it, what they think it means, what it reminds them of (other words? a place? an older generation? a pasttime?), and why they think it's slang. Then, at the end, you can compile all the journals so that all the students have a copy, and they're usually pretty happy about that.

[kpan217]

Thanks for your thoughts on the topic! I guess I was really just interested to know how other people approached this. I had some success in the past teaching slang greetings and farewells as a first lesson and those stuck pretty well. It's just that often students ask me specifically for slang lessons, and while it never seemed like something I'd want to spend a whole class period on, there's a few things like "hanging out" that come up often enough that they seem worth taking a moment to explain. So I've sort of been spot-treating colloquialisms and things that I use or that people simply ask me about.

Most of my students don't really think to use English outside of the classroom, and even if they are speaking English in class, they slip back into Chinese to make fun of each other, so I've been thinking maybe teaching some casual slang terms might encourage them to relax a bit while using English.

Thanks for the input though! While my students don't encounter very much English outside the classroom, I think I can incorporate that idea somehow. ^_^