Don’t “Dude” the Boss: Basics on the Formal/Informal Dilemma for ESL Students

With professional pushing for bosses to be more “personal” to make employees perform better, the lines are fuzzier and fuzzier of when to ask, “What’s up?” and when to ask, “How are you?” Use these situational activities for your business ESL students to make it clear how informal to be.
Teach students how to read a situation by listening first to the other dialogue of their colleagues and then mimicking it. If colleagues are using informal English, they should too! When we do not know, it is always best to imitate. Every successful business person learns this skill early on, whether the new workplace skill is ESL or navigating administrative support. This situational dialogue game teaches them to respond with mimicking questions to elicit style from colleagues.
ESL students need to be amateur anthropologists in the workplace and observe behaviors to understand language. Give them an activity to pay attention in their workplace one day and journal about behaviors of colleagues. If they are not working yet, have them go to an English-speaking office for a half hour and record everything they see. Give a series of starter questions: “What are people wearing?” “What do they do on their breaks?” “Do people eat together?” Then, on the next day of class, discuss as a group and compare which offices are more formal.
Teach how typically, a lunch break is a break and people want to be less formal and more personal, but only to a certain point. This is tricky for non-native speakers because Americans and British are much less personal than other cultures in general and keep boundaries fairly high. If ESL employees are too formal and different, however, they will not fit into the work culture. Have students prepare answers to these three “informal” topics:
It can be particularly challenging to meet a new client or new colleagues at a different office. Teach them these basics about how to read a room, and then have them practice by writing out scenes on different cards and how formal they think the meeting will be.
A card might read: Cubicle setting with one window facing a residential street, round table with plush desk chairs, two women in skirts and casual tops and one man in khaki slacks and a button down shirt.
Create an activity where they pay attention to 1) how often, 2) where, and 3) when people laugh in the office. This is a great indicator of how formal an environment is. If people are having fun, the workplace is probably less formal, and those are the situations as well in which the ESL worker wants to be less formal. If people are not laughing out loud, advise them to stifle their chuckles or find a quiet laugh on the internet or via a text when they can and stick to formal language. Have students record, in one work day, every time they hear someone laugh, where they were doing so, and what they were doing when doing so. Then have students compare their notes at the next class and discuss.
Situational activities like these will provide students a chance to pay closer attention to their environments and clarify how to read those tricky cultural cues!