Slang's place in language education
- raymondtartaglia
- Feb 18, 2021
- 2 min read
This week, my google alerts turned out many interesting articles but one caught my attention the most. The article titled “Foreign language learners should be exposed to slang in the classroom and here’s why…” stood out to me because at first glance, especially to an educator, this seems almost “taboo” if you will. In education, everyone is always about the formal or proper way of learning, especially language. So, I found this article interesting.
The author mentions a member of the Department of Languages and Cultures at Lancaster University, Sascha Stollhans, and they state his belief to be “that standardized language norms are artificial and language learners should learn about all aspects of language, even the controversial ones” (EurekAlert & Rothwell, 2021). The article goes on to talk about some of the concerns among professionals and offers a few tips for policy-makers, publishers and authors of material to help incorporate some of the non-standard language pieces.
This got me thinking about this as a topic that language professionals discuss. So, of course I went to find another article. The second article, titled “The Importance of Slang for Language Learning”, written by Kristin, talks about many of the ways that slang can be used in language education. She says “the ultimate goal of language learning is the everyday verbal communication with other speakers of the language” (Kristin, 2018). For L2 students this could be communicating with peers or teachers about anything; from the steps of graphing a quadratic function to sharing plans for the weekend or even expressing one’s feelings. Sometimes, we need a bit of slang to get our entire message across. Kristin, also goes on to go on to say that the use of slang can help students have a sense of belonging as well as develop an appreciation for art and culture. Could you imagine being an English language learner and trying to understand Ross’s sarcasm or Phoebe’s aloofness in the television show Friends? I feel like that is an extreme example but it certainly makes the appropriate point.
After reading both of these articles, I was reminded of a conversation I had with one of my students around them learning Spanish in school. The student said that Spanish was one of their hardest classes because it was so different than the Spanish that was spoken at home. I responded with “you are right, it is not the Spanish you speak at home, it is academic Spanish”. I’m sure the Spanish that is spoke at home has some locational dialect and most definitely slang which is certainly not proper academic language. I believe that if a student can balance both conversational language and academic language then they will have an advantage over speakers who have just mastered one form of the language. Language variations, slang, colloquialism, idioms, sarcasm, these are all important and they do belong in education because the main goal is to be able to have conversations with others.
EurekAlert, & Rothwell, A. (2021, February 17). Foreign language learners should be exposed to slang in the classroom and here's why.... Retrieved February 17, 2021, from https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-02/lu-fll021721.php
Kristin. (2018, November 7). The importance of slang for language learning. Retrieved February 18, 2021, from https://www.verbling.com/articles/post/the-importance-of-slang-for-language-lea
This is a great post! Thanks for sharing. It hooked me in the minute it discussed the usage of slang in the classroom. I agree with everything you discuss here because the way we teach language is vastly different from the way it is spoken within a casual setting. I can relate this to my own experience of learning Spanish; I found it incredibly difficult to then immerse myself in the culture because I could not keep up with the way in which they spoke, as it was vastly different from the "academic version" I learned in school.
Hi Raymond,
I think your post is incredibly interesting and you make some great points! I never really considered how important slang was to the culture of a language even when I use it on a daily basis. I used to be a camp counselor over the summers for a camp that had a prominent ESL program. We had a majority of students from China coming to learn English. Many of them spoke good English, but would get lost in how the counselors spoke due to how much slang we used. Part of the program was to immerse them in American culture to help them better learn how it is actually spoken within the culture. I feel like they were…