Social English and British Culture

My afternoon classes have this rather fancy name. It's an "option" and popular with the students - maybe they think they will find the key to living comfortably in the UK.

But there's no syllabus as such, no specific book to work from, just a fairly vague list of suggestions and possible places to look for ideas.

So for my first lesson I had half an hour's warning that this was my class, and at least fifteen minutes of that was taken up with walking to find the actual classroom ... full of eager little faces looking at me expectantly.

I went around the class, asking them to tell me about themselves and where they were from - and one thing they noticed particularly when then came to Sheffield. They gave all the expected answers, except one lovely Japanese girl. She told me she was surprised by the "crime rate".

I was a little taken aback. I had seen a few drunks on the street - something we had not seen in either China or Turkey - had she seen them too, or had something bad happened to her? I asked her to explain a little more.

"It is very cold," she explained.

Oh! The climate! Yes, it is a little cool, isn't it.

It's a little bit funny trying to explain British culture when you haven't been here for 37 years. At least they didn't give Peter that task, it's all new to him.

We haven't heard a lot of really broad Yorkshire accents. The man in the hardware shop explained to us slowly and very clearly ( realising that we're not from 'round 'ere) how to find a place we were looking for, and all of his articles were neatly clipped:

"You go down t' road past t' pub ..."

And we had no trouble understanding him despite the northern vowel sounds.

We decided to get really traditional and have some Fish 'n Chips. (Not that we don't have them in Oz, and very nice ones too!)

Peter asked the lady loud and clear, "A large serve of chips, please."

"Yer wha'?!" she asked with surprise.

Peter repeated his request, realising there may be a language problem.

"Oh! I don't usually get spoken to polite like that around here!" she explained.

My culture class are a grand mixture including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Spanish, Saudia Arabian ... most of the Libyans seem to be in Peter's IELTS class. The Japanese students are mostly in a group travelling together, and they have a professor accompanying them. This weekend they are all going up to Edinburgh as part of their UK experience. The professor sat in on my class the day before, and we discussed the differences between England and Scotland and what they can expect - not that I actually know, never having been there.

And then we also did some pronunciation practice - we've got to work on those 'l's and 'r's. Just for fun (my fun?) I got them practising the tongue twister: "Red leather, yellow leather" - because 'th' is another problem they have. I told them for homework they have to practise it all the way to Edinburgh.

That's going to be a fun bus trip, ay?