TESOL on language barriers - slang

Students pursuing higher education outside their homeland has become a global trend because of the numerous benefits along with studying abroad. Benefits such as acquiring a new language, obtaining multicultural experiences, and accumulating knowledge about the host country.   Despite these benefits of studying abroad, international students also face multiple challenges while adjusting to the host country, challenges such as adaptation to new social and cultural norms, limited social support, and feeling of isolation; and previous research demonstrated that students’ ability to communicate in the host countries language is the main factor that mediates such adjustment. To be able to communicate in an English-speaking country, one has to overcome certain language barriers that impact one’s level of English proficiency, and this paper will focus on describing one of the language barriers that most students might encounter while studying abroad, slang.

Slang is a type of language that is considered informal, is usually spoken than written, and is typically used by particular groups of people. Even though slang was defined as restricted to certain groups such as criminals, soldiers, and children, but with its continuous evolving and changing characteristic, ordinary people also use it on daily basis . An example of slang would be the usage of the term brother, compares to its fixed meaning in Standard English, which can refer to many different things in slang such as companion or friend. Also, native speakers use slang to reinforce social identity and create relationships of trust, which further enhance the effectiveness of communication; and for L2 learners/international students who did not grow up in the host country, who often lack the knowledge of slangs, would find slang as a language barrier that weakens their communication effectiveness .

One research conducted with international students who were in their last year of university study, indicating that their fluency of English should be fair and should have a high lexicon level, but results demonstrated that they only knew 32% of the slang words asked on the survey. And if that is the case for students who had been studying for years in the host country, then it must be more severe for those who just started to study abroad. This limited knowledge of slang among international students seems to be caused mainly by the educational system in English-speaking countries that mostly designs and concentrates their curriculum on the formal English settings, which limits the exposure of informal English input for international students. Hence, when they get involved in spontaneous conversations with native speakers, the lack of knowledge of slang would be the barrier that hinders successful information exchange and their ability to communicate properly with native speakers .

In conclusion, slang is an informal language that is commonly used in daily life activities in most English-speaking countries, its lack of exposure in the schooling system indicating that international students cannot acquire it through the formal educational process, and this lack of knowledge further causes them to feel discouraged to maintain communicative conversations with native speakers.   Hence, slang is a language barrier that most people will encounter while studying abroad.This is why so many foreign students want to get TESOL Certificate, because TESOL Certificate can help students overcome these obstacles。