I remember once, earlier on in my time in China I got the words '吸管' and '西瓜' mixed up and this Singaporean guy told me something like, "Yeah, in Singapore we use Mandarin too, but we tend to just call a straw, a 'straw', it's far simpler, there's no need to invent these silly Chinese words for everything just for the sake of it". To be fair, he seemed far more competent at speaking English than Mandarin despite a Chinese background, so how true what he said actually was, I do not know.

When it comes to Aussie small talk, even a winging pom like me can find it a little tricky, my mate's commonly used expression "We're not here to f**k spiders" confused me to death, until I realised it just meant people needed to work faster and get things done.

As for the Chinese not understanding small talk and stuff, I just remind some students how racist and intolerant Western people can be if you do not try hard enough to understand them regardless of their accent/dialect or slang. Works especially well with those who actually plan to study or work abroad. Some Chinese strangely associate learning English with prestige and view colloquial expressions and slang as something that is a dirty impurity but when you consider how people use it in their daily lives, regardless of what language they speak, it is something that they really should learn.