Ya Gotta Know It!: a Conversational Approach to American Slang for the Esl Classroom

Many English as a Second Language students believe that slang is obscence language or is ued by the young or uneducated. In fact, most slang is inoffensive and acts as an integral and indispensable part of American English. In Ya Gotta Know It!, author Hania Hassan demonstrates a fun, new way for advanced ESL students to tackle this vital but often confusing, part of American lexicon. Ya Gotta Know It! teaches lessons on slang using thirty, true-to-life dialogues. Each lesson features challenging matching exercises and a series of classroom-tested questions that encourage students to develop improved comprehension, appreciation for proper context, and a comfortable speaking familiarity with the new idiomatic vocabulary. Students will learn the meaning of slang terms and phrases, such as "we go way back," "run a tab," "burst someone's bubble," "up at the crack of dawn," "beat around the bush," "getting my feet wet," and more. Appropriate as a complete, advanced ESL course in idioms, or to supplement other teaching materials, Ya Gotta Know It! includes a helpful section on relaxed speech, a verb tense chart, a glossary of grammatical terms, and a dictionary containing all of the terms introduced in the dialogues.