Is "bad" language really "bad"?

I wanted to write about something that comes up quite a bit in the Annalivia staff room when teaching adult students. It usually goes something like this:

Teacher A: "Oh god! Guess what Student X asked me today?"
Teacher B: "What?"
Teacher A: "He asked me what does (insert bad language here) mean?"
Teacher B: "So what did you say?"

And so starts the debate on teaching "bad" language...

I think we all agree that language is a tool used to communicate. It is the means we use to express our thoughts, desires, emotions, hopes and frustrations. Swearing is part of expressive language and so if you are learning a language, you presumably want to improve your communication skills. The reality is that people DO use bad language (also known as to swear, to curse, to cuss, to blaspheme).

Swear words are everywhere they are used in films, books (Shakespeare used curse words!), on the street, everywhere! They are in dictionares and in school playgrounds. But why do we swear?

Well, let's face it, swearing is an outlet for emotions, it allows you to intensify what you are saying. Also, it supposedly relieves pain! When you curse after hitting your head and it hurts, apparently is it the adult equivalent of crying. There are lots of others reasons too... but for the sake of brevity i'll let you Google those reasons for yourself!

So the question is why would you put a language learner at a disadvantage by not teaching them bad language? The obvious answer is that by teaching bad language, you, as a teacher, run the risk of offending another student. As a teacher you have to take into consideration ALL the students in your class. More often than not, you will have different nationalities, different cultures, different ages and different religions in your class. See the problem?

As a teacher you think to yourself "I'm telling these students to go out and use the language I am teaching them in class in the real world, to practise the English I am teaching them." and so there is a contradiction in not teaching them the bad language. See the dilemma?

So what do we do in Annalivia? Answer: We let the teacher decide. Teachers know the class and have a sense of how to handle the situation. I think it would be inappropriate to put "bad language" on the sylabus, but then it would be equally wrong to pretend it doesn't exist!

Thoughts?

A cold busy, winter week!

It seems like the mild weather has left us and replaced us with an icy, windy winter! It's not all bad as it means we can start using the fireplace again and there is more of a Christmas feel to the place!

The cold weather aside, we had a computer genius from a fellow Tandem school in Bremen (http://www.casa-bremen.de) who was setting up a new computer system for us.

We then went over to London for the annual Tandem conference - you can check out some pictures on Stuart's website (englishschoollondon.blogspot.com)

In other news, Diane (our social coordinator) is gone off and holidays leaving her friend Kim to look after our lovely students. As I type they are all in the Wishing Well pub listening to Irish music. Barry (one of our teachers) is taking a group of them out to a surprise visit. Diane is back at the weekend and I'm sure will be fully charged and ready to go!

I've got some nice photos of the Christmas lights in Dun Laoghaire but unfortunately there's something wrong with my laptop and I can't paste any of them into the blog. I'll try it again tomorrow!

A new Arrival!!!!

"Old arrival” may be more apt, but at least I have arrived! Some of you may remember me from my days at Bluefeather in Monkstown (1983-2006). Annalivia has now taken up the Tandem International member school baton where Bluefeather left off. You can see more about TI at http://www.tandem-school.com/
Kevin has kindly presented me with the honour of being Annalivia’s Director of Studies and I hope to be able to do all I can to live up to everybody’s expectations of me. I’m at my desk here in the main office at Annalivia from 09.00 -13.00.
From the outset, I would like to reassure the reader that Annalivia continues to enhance its reputation as one of the best schools for adults in Ireland. To date, the feedback I am receiving is that a course at Annalivia has proven to be a hugely rewarding, enjoyable, and one of the most memorable experiences of students’ lives. I hope to be part of this success in the future and to do whatever I can to ensure that students can reap the maximum benefit from their stay.
You can contact me at greg@annaliviaschool.com if you are a student who might like to know more about us or if you have already been with us and would like to stay in touch with the target language after you have returned home, or if you are a teacher who would like to work in the one of the best schools in these islands, or if you are an agent who would like to know how your students are getting on, or if you need some more info on what we do here for prospective students you would like to send us!