I was hammering the importance of saying only what's necessary on the radio to my student today. I had to laugh when upon leaving CTA, the centre controller took a good 30 seconds to tell us to squawk 1200 and go away - at least 15 of which were spent saying "arrrrrrr"!
Standard phraseology makes it easier for all of us. Despite having prepared him fairly thoroughly, my student, who was from overseas, just looked at me blankly after the totally non-standard phraseology in that instance.
He was expecting something like "ABC, leaving controlled airspace, radar and control services terminated squawk 1200, frequency change approved"
What he got was complex enough to confuse the best of us!
