1. Idioms, slang and phrasal verbs
Laurie Burns, EAL Instructor
Idioms, slang and phrasal verbs

2. Outline Overview Why teach this stuff? Strategies Examples
What would you teach?
Handouts
Book recommendations
Questions?

3. Overview
Slang A type of language consisting of words and phrases that are regarded as very informal, are more common in speech than writing, and are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people.
Idioms
A group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words.
Phrasal Verbs
An idiomatic phrase consisting of a verb and another element.
- From the Oxford Dictionary

4. Why Teach This Stuff? Students will come across it! Integration is key
Whether students are studying academically or not, they will come across common language in:
Movies, TV, music
Friends and community
Workplace
Small talk with people on the street

5. Strategies Introduce groups of phrasal verbs
Read-teach-they ask questions
Fill in the blanks exercises
You make sentences: students guess meanings
Students make sentences
Review: role plays, charades, Taboo type game,
guess what the picture is representing
Flashcards, drilling

6. Example of teaching telephone phrasal verbs
Introduce telephone phrasal verbs
Very popular, used a lot
Elicit from the students:
What do they already know?
What have they heard?
Go over popular ones.
Example: call back -is to return someone’s call:
‘I’ll ask him to call you back, when he gets home.’
Explain meaning
First class: fill in the blank exercise
Next class: making sentences
Following class: role plays

7. What would you teach?
Imagine for a moment that you are going to be working with a student or a group of students who are mechanics or working in a car shop. They are having trouble understanding a lot of what is said at work.
What slang or idioms or phrasal verbs would you outline to teach them?

8. Some items I would teach
Phrasal verbs
Others
Turn on
Turn off
Break down
Come off/ fell off
Drive off
Fill up
Drive by
Run over
Traffic jam Reduced speech
Slammed - Contractions
Blinker
Some swear words they are likely to hear in the garage if you are comfortable
Beater
Clunker
Give’r

9. Some Book Recommendations
In the Know: Understanding and Using Idioms by Cindy Leaney (Cambridge)
Divided into contexts and concepts
You’re Hired Now What? by Lynda Goldman (Oxford)
Has good small sections on business buzzwords and idioms around time
The Slangman Guide to Biz Speak 1 and 2: Slang, Idioms & Jargon Used in Business English 1 and 2 by David Burke (Slangman Publishing)
Interchange Level 2 by Jack C. Richards, Jonathan Hull, Susan Proctor (Cambridge)

10. ESL Library Serials
ESLibrary.com has a great selection of idiom teaching through listening to “serials”

11. Thank you for listening
Questions, comments, suggestions?
Thank you for listening