My students have often asked why they’re learning one style of English, let’s say American, over British, Australian, Canadian or even south African. It’s usually the style of English chosen by the school management determined by the most common form of English used in their country but sometimes I have students wanting to understand which English is the best to learn.

It’s not all the same

A young student I had in China studied American English throughout her schooling and when I met her in university she told me about a native American English teacher she had before me. The teacher used a lot of vocabulary she wasn’t familiar with. She told me how she began to get frustrated with herself for not understanding him, she had thought that she had not been studying hard enough.

Unless I’m teaching about idioms, colloquialisms or slang I keep the way I speak in the classroom very standard by using popular words. This student didn’t understand why she could follow me perfectly but not him. In her mind, my being Australian meant that I was speaking British English. She thought that all American English was the same.

The truth is, no form or style of English is exactly the same, nor is it better or worse than another.

Studying vocabulary is more than just memorising a dictionary

Consider your own native language and how it can change according to where in your country you are or what demographic is speaking. Primary school students in a southern school will not be using the same language as stockbrokers in the capital city. The same applies universally to English- who is speaking and why is more important than what is being said. There are a lot of native English speakers who do not converse well simply because they don’t speak the same type of English, that is, one of them is using vocabulary unfamiliar to the other.

Instead of asking what type of English should you speak you need to first understand why you’re learning it and who will you be speaking with the most? Your learning needs will depend solely on why you’re learning to speak English.

A family immigrating to an English speaking country should be studying the English most prevalent in that country. There is no point learning the vocabulary of American English if you’re moving to London. People may understand what you’re saying but you will not assimilate well to the environment because you will use different vocabulary than they are accustomed to.

Vocabulary is one of the most important aspects to learning any language but that doesn’t mean you should whip out a dictionary and begin reading it. It might help to increase the size of your brain but it will not help you to speak English better. The key to learning vocabulary is learning words you will use most often and this comes back to why you’re learning English.

Specialise your English

Every course offers you General English and from my experience this doesn’t vary greatly between the different types of English however eventually you’re going to want to specialise your studies.

I used to teach a corporate class of engineers, they understood the need to specialise their English to suit their needs. The company was expanding and merging with an American business. They needed to expand their vocabulary to suit international business terminology, travel, technology, American customs, and daily lifestyle in the American city they were going to.

Depending on the age and ability of my students I like to motivate my students to teach each other. In the first week we made a list of all the different types of speakers there are within the topics they wanted to specialise in. Like, for example, a bus driver, a disabled passenger,  or people in a debate/ speech, a boss, an employee or travel agent, hotel concierge, coffee barista, waiter, etc. Each role being relevant to their overall learning needs because these were people they might find themselves interacting with in the future.

Every week I would create a scenario that reflected their specialised topics. Before class and the 30+ students would choose a different role, their homework was to research what their character might say in this scenario. They would present the following week with the new vocabulary and dialogues. Every week the students came back with more and more interesting things they had learned about the topic from the eyes of a different character.

In a class of this size it was labour intensive but very useful to getting proactive involvement in class. For you, and perhaps you want to enlist your other class mates, or if your an English teacher give it a try. This class was learning location specific vocabulary that gave them real life scenarios that they could apply themselves directly to.

When you step outside of the restrictions of which English you learn and come back to why you’re learning it you can easily specialise and create useful scenarios yourself.

A variety of different styles of online resources include:

The Language Directory: this is actually the place to start all your research because it houses all the great language reference resources out there plus a few good ones for specialisations.

The Urban Dictionary: this dictionary is a collection of words often made up, usually spoken rather than written, location-specific and can be very funny. It’s written by every day people so it using a lot of local slang and perhaps the best feature is the my city function that finds words specific to where you are.

Dictionary.com: this is a free, American dictionary that provides the phonetic spelling, a tool to listen to the pronunciation (through speakers), the word origin and alternative spellings, as well as links to other useful tools like a translator, or a thesaurus. The site is run by Ask.com, which to it’s own credit is a great place to ask questions and receive all kinds of answers, although, you can’t always quote the results as fact.

A Maths Dictionary: this is a dictionary designed for kids but I don’t think that should stop anyone for getting in and checking it out.

Kids Dictionary: again, this is for kids but what I like about this dictionary is that it allows children (& adults) to sound out words to help them teach themselves how to spell the words they need.It also has some easy to follow brain games, which were a lot of fun, they tested me too!

The Fact Monster: not a dictionary but still a great learning tool for random facts that will definitely help you specialise your vocabulary.

Internet Slang/ Abbreviations: this is an interesting site for all the short hand commonly used in chat rooms or sites online. Things like LOL (laugh out loud) seem like baby talk compared to some of the abbreviations and acronyms I’ve found. You have to wonder with some if they’re actually every used.

Your best friend is Google in English, type in your specialisation or ask any question and read away. The answers are there. Just remember that it’ll first take you to the American based Google, you’ll need to add the suffix for the country you want to search in, for example google.com.au for Australia or google.co.uk for the UK.

Image Credits: Dictionary, Studying with friends