How To Teach Polite Phrases

How To Teach Polite Phrases: 3 Secret Ingredients
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Polite phrases are important when learning a language. Foranyone who has traveled, it is obvious that please and thank you are some of the most useful things to learn in any language. In the classroom, you will probably be the only one appreciative of politelanguage however if your students ever have the opportunity to speak English outside the classroom, this will be the most important thing you can teach them.

How To Proceed
1Context
Whenintroducing questions for the first time, it is important to put them in context. After the introduction of vocabulary, phrases and meaning, drill the target language and then ask your students to think aboutwhen they would use the new structure. For instance, you would not randomly walk up to someone on the street and say “Where is the bookstore?” When demonstrated, your students will see that in a reallife situation, it would be best to add some polite words and phrases around the edges of the request. Once they understand the need for this and you have paired polite phrases with your targetstructure, they should always be practiced together in the same way that you teach a cat instead of simply cat. Starting to use polite language in the introduction phase will ensure that your studentsassociate the two from the very beginning.
Practicing model dialogues is always an excellent opportunity to use polite phrases. For example, when teaching students the structure “How much is this ~?”have them practice a model dialogue or role-play based on the one below:

A: Excuse me. How much is this book?
B: It’s $20.
A: Oh, thank you!
B: You’re welcome.

Half the dialogue is simple politelanguage which frames the target structure. This is much more beneficial for your students to study than the very simple two line target structure because it gives the question some context and...