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Classroom Language
As mentioned earlier, classroom communication is a two-way street. It may be the case that, while your students are finding you generally easy to follow, you are having some difficulty understanding their spoken communication. One reason for this may be your students “casual speech” pronunciation, which may most likely include processes like reducing and linking. Reducing means modifying or omitting sounds or function words. (For example, you may hear the word “have” pronounced as “uv” or the word “them” pronounced as “em.”). Linking means connecting or blending sounds across syllable boundaries. (You may hear, for example, “keep it” pronounced as “kee pit,” “find out” pronounced as “fine doubt,” or “an ice cream” pronounced as “a nice cream.”). Examples of phrases containing both reducing and blending are “Izzybizzy?” (for “Is he busy?”) and “taker out” (for either “take her out” or “take a route”). It is helpful to know that these changes are systematic, occur frequently in function words (e.g., prepositions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs and modals), and serve to make spoken English smooth and easier to pronounce. Rules to help you predict these “fast speech phenomena” (and examples) can be found in most pronunciation textbooks (see references at the end of this section). Recognizing a few very common reduced phrases, such as the following, will also give you a good start:
| Reduced phrase | Unreduced phrase |
| "gonna" | going to |
| "wanna" | want to |
| "hasta" | has to |
| "hafta" | have to |
| "cuduv" or "cuda" | could have |
| "wuduv" or "wuda" | would have |
| "mustuv" or "musta" | must have |
| "shuduv" or "shuda" | should have |
Notice the use of these phrases before a main verb, as in “gonna finish the report,” “wuda turned it in,” “musta missed that lecture.” Here are some examples of questions and answers you might hear in your class. Can you figure out what is being said?
| Reduced | Unreduced |
| “Mi gonna hafta type the report?” | Am I going to have to type the report? |
| “Zat gonna be on the test?” | Is that going to be on the test? |
| “We shuda square dit.” | We should have squared it. |
| “Wenze wanit?” | When does he want it? |
| “Zere gonna be a midterm?” | Is there going to be a midterm? |
| “D’we wanna carryitover?” | Do we want to carry it over? |
| “Givim the book.” | Give him the book. |
Until you become familiar with the rapid, relaxed speech of your students, you can always ask them to repeat more slowly what they said. When they repeat the phrase, they will most likely produce more complete, unreduced forms. You can also try to familiarize yourself with common reduced phrases by practicing pronouncing them as your students do.
Especially if you are new to Ohio State, you may find some of your students’ terms and expressions new and strange to you, for example, “pop quiz,” which is a “surprise” quiz, one that is not announced. Other expressions such as “make-ups” and “grading on the curve” may be equally mystifying without a guide— even to native English speakers from outside of the United States.
English is my first language so language is not a problem. Unfortunately my students only speak “American,” that is, educational jargon in the United States ... and pop culture references that at first, I had no idea what they were talking about.
– Robert Day, ITA, Zoology, Great Britain
One way to learn commonly used academic jargon is to underline all new expressions on your syllabus and ask an experienced native-speaking instructor to explain these terms to you. Lists of expressions and terms are often included in textbooks as well. Other good books are Teaching Matters, by Barnes & Finger (1990) and Communicate: Strategies for international teaching assistants, by Smith, Meyers, & Burkhalter (1992). Click here for a glossary of education jargon.
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