Having only taught young adult learners so far, I can say that learners at this age are most receptive to the playful and informal use of the language. I was always amazed to see how quickly my students would pick up slangs and informal expressions, even when they had limited proficiency in English. As I write this, I am ridiculously stuck by a burning question that I want to share with all the language teachers out there: Should foreign language teachers ever teach slangs in the classroom? I understand that some informal expressions can be very culturally inappropriate to discuss in class. But, wouldn't young/teenage language learners want to know some 'cool' words, especially if their motivation was to assimilate more with the target culture.
I wasn't intentionally looking for such language teaching resources, when I found the Double-Tongued Dictionary, an online database of undocumented or under-documented words from the fringes of English, with a focus on slang, jargon, and new words. These are words and expressions that are absent from, or are poorly covered in, mainstream dictionaries. I think this a very innovative and helpful idea of not only introducing a colorful cultural element to language learning, but also of introducing something fun and exciting in the classroom, occasionally.
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