Australian English
黄敏
English is spoken in many different countries. As a whole, it’s one same language. However, if you go to one specific English-speaking country, you’ll find that the language there has its own characteristics, especially the everyday expressions. Australian English is not an exception.
This can be seen in the informal words. Australian people have ‘ Oz’ for Australia, ‘aussie’ for Australian, ‘yukky’ for bad taste, ‘loo’ for toilet, ‘barbie’ for barbecue, ‘mozzie’ for mosquitoes, ‘chockie’ for chocolate, ‘scorcher’ for hot weather… So, when you hear people say, ‘ Will you show me the way to the loo?’ ‘Gee, it’s been a scorcher today, hasn’t it?’ ‘ I like the aussie barbie.’ don’t be confused, that’s just Australian English!
As to oral expressions, it’s more interesting. I’ve found that most of them result from quick and lazy pronunciations. For example, ‘J’wanna’ is for ‘Do you want to’, ‘J’ava’goodweegen’ is for ‘Do you have a good weekend’, ‘Howzat’ is for ‘How is that’… Of course, these are not correct written English. The fact is that these are so frequently used that people just make it easy and short to say. They understand each other anyway.
Australians are very nice and friendly. They greet their family members, friends and even strangers that they see in public places. Thus they have their own way for greeting. Usually, people would say ‘G’day’, which means ‘Good day’. But when wandering in a shopping mall, or browsing the goods in a shop, I keep hearing ‘ Hey, how are you doing?’ The simple way to reply is ‘ Good, thanks.’
The weird thing is that Australian English also doesn’t have some expressions that we are quite familiar with. When having an ‘aussie barbie’ with Lyn, the local, I said, ‘ I’m watering.’ But she showed no understanding.
Perhaps someday, as the whole world is getting closer and closer, people in other countries begin to say ‘It’s been a scorcher today’ and Australians begin to say ‘ I’m watering’. Who knows?
What did they learn in the study tour?
欧文堂
The students spent four weeks in Brisbane, Australia. What did they learn in the study tour? Let’s take a look.
Students had English classes in UIL(Union Institute of Language) from Monday to Friday. They stayed with the home stay families at night and went out with them on Sundays. On Saturdays, the students went out with teachers to have outdoor excursions. We visited the parks, museum and farms.
In class, each student had a book. They would finish the course in four weeks. In this Study Tour Booklet, It had ten modules. The following is the content of each module.
Module 1: Getting to know you
It’s the beginning of this course. The students should learn to know each other first. They must be able to give and respond to greetings, ask and respond to common personal information questions, write basic personal information sentences, say and spell dates and months of the year.
This is easy for the students. Everyone got to know each other quickly.
Module 2: Around the house
As the students lived with the local families, they should identify outside features common to Australian homes, identify household rooms and furniture, use prepositions of place, use vocabulary and phrases to talk about household tasks, feel confident participating in everyday household conversations, understand more about Australian customs.
This is very interesting for the students. They learnt more words about the Australian house Aussie lingo(Australian language), like “G’day” means “good day”, “see ya” means “see you”, “J’wanna?” means “Do you want to?” and “loo” means “toilet”.
Module 3: Daily routines
This module was a little bit easy for the students. They talked about the time, daily routines and wrote diaries.
Module 4: Australian food
Every place has its special food. The students could taste some popular Australian food, and they should use some common Australian colloquial words and phrases to express degrees of likes and dislikes.
Australia is a country with many migrants. Therefore, there are many styles of food from many different countries which are popular in Australia. In the cities you can find Chinese, Indian, Italian, Greek, Thai, Japanese and Korean restaurants. However, there are many typical Australian foods. “Vegemite” is one of the best known Australian foods. It is a wheat extract very high in vitamin B. “Meat Pie” is the most famous and popular fast food in Australia. They are usually served hot. They sometimes have different fillings, but a real Aussie meat pie will usually only have meat and gravy. “Lamingtons” are little Australian cakes that were invented as a way of using stale bread. “ANZAC biscuit” is the tasty non-perishable biscuit which was initially pat of the rations issued to the soldiers at Gallipoli. Since then the ANZAC Biscuit has been a household favourite.
Module 5: Describing family and friends
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