How are you?
A: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
B: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
A: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
B: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
A: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
B: I’m fine, thank you. And you?
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Every student of
English as a second or subsequent language learns the standard
How are you? greeting. How many of us native speakers use it on a regular basis without wanting to gag? In actual practice there are so many more interesting, colorful and, most importantly, natural ways of saying hey.
As an ESL/EFL teacher, you will hear I’m fine thank you, and you? more times in one day than you thought possible. What the hell does I’m fine mean anyway? The easiest way to discourage this banal, lifeless response is to teach a multitude of alternatives. Start with simple ones like, I’m hungry, I’m tired, I’m angry, I’m cold. You can then move onto more complicated responses like I’m confused, I’m excellent, I’m nervous. You can introduce slang like I’m wicked, I’m shattered, I’m gutted. Whatever you desire, just discourage the I’m fine response.
What’s up?
How’s it goin’?
How you going?
How you doing?
How’s everything?
What’s shaking?
What’s going on?
What’s new?
How you been?
There are a number of ways of introducing new, fun and exciting greetings into the classroom. Most of these work best as a warm up activity. Teach a new greeting and appropriate response and help the students with the new pronunciation. Try as best as possible to prevent and discourage robot chanting. Teach your class a new gesture, like a high five or secret handshake. If you have a new phrase and new gesture to go with it, you are set for a wild and exciting row game. Since most classrooms in Asia and, in fact, around the world, are set up in neat and orderly rows, you can use this to your advantage. If you are working without rows, indeed maybe even without desks, you can try the mingling game.
The row game: The first student in the row turns around and greets the student behind them with the new greeting and gesture. Once they have completed the first student can sit down and the second student in the row greets the third student, and so on. The last person in the row must run up to the front, greet you with the proper gesture in order to win. You can hand out stickers, stamps, or whatever small prize to the winning row.
The mingling game: For classes that are not in ordered rows you can get the students to walk around the class for a set period of time (2-3 minutes) and exchange greetings with as many people as they can. The student to greet the most classmates is the winner. Naturally, you have to hope that students are honest about how many people they have interacted with. To curb cheating (if this is a problem) you can always increase the time limit and have students write down the names of the people they exchange greetings with.
Most of my students now greet me with either a What’s up? or my preferred How’s it goin? Now, when a student says How are you? to me in the hallway, I stand stiff as a board, my arms pressed into my sides and with a vacant gaze somewhere to the right of their head I respond in a robotic, trance. Even my fellow staff mates know better than to incur my wrath and try to find different ways to greet me.