My wife, who was born in Brazil, follows a number of online social media ESL teachers. At this time I am not one of them. However, she often comes to me with questions because she is confused about what the teachers are putting out there. It seems to very popular to discuss unusual expressions or idioms without including appropriate contexts. I believe that language should not be taught without teaching appropriate, contextual usage at the same time. This also applies to teaching the rules and skills of native language to native language speakers. Wheeler & Swords (2004) made some interesting observations about how this can work in a classroom when trying to teach students with varied home languages to speak in a more formal way in the classroom. Students are able to begin code switching - changing their language usage to a different variety - when they understand that there may be a difference in the variety of English that is appropriate for the...
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