[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. ^_^