Teacher Discussion Forums

I would like to know if anyone has any helpful hints in regards to regional accents and phrases.

I am from NJ, the southern part closer to Philadelphia, and I am very guilty of peppering my speech with "yo", "youse" and other incorrect words. Since my ESL students will deal with these phrases outside of the classroom, how do I show them what they mean without reinforcing negative speech patterns?

Hi there -

There is Standard American English and then there are regional differences. And you need to tell the truth: that some regional differences have negative connotations while others do not. That isn't reinforcing any negative usage - that's just telling the truth. you want to maximize their changes of passing TOEFL or IELTS, right? Then they need to speak SAE. That's just the truth of it. In the south, it's Y'all - and that clearly would not be accepting in TOEFL. So you just have to teach the standard and then note that "out on the street" you will hear X, Y and Z..........