Doing the Needful: The Power of Materials That Reflect Global Englishes

What does “correct English” sound like to you?

This question has launched a thousand language programs. Not only in classrooms, but across social media and socioeconomic divides, this question capitalizes on the insecurity of some multilingual learners of English (MLEs) about their accent or proficiency, triggering at best inadequacy, and at the very worst, fear. The responses to this question reflect the way many of our learners first encountered English—and how much they and their families may invest to achieve what they consider an “ideal” level of fluency.

But where does this idealized version of English come from? Through television, movies, and online content, our students can easily be exposed to the many varieties of English and the varied ways fluent English speakers communicate. But this variety is lacking in some very essential spaces: the classroom materials themselves that learners use and expert teachers endorse.

In fact, many English language teaching (ELT) materials continue to rely on a relatively narrow range of language models (Jeong & Lindemann, 2025; Kang & Kostromitina, 2025). Listening passages often feature a limited set of accents, and dialogues tend to follow predictable patterns. Variation appears less frequently, and when it does, it is not always explored in depth. While English is spoken as an official language in more than 65 countries (Assi, 2022), our teaching materials seem to reflect the varieties and cultures of the same three or four.

The Impact on Learners’ Confidence—and Comprehension

After noticing the dominance of “standard” Englishes in our textbooks and the endless stream of available corrective exercises for local varieties of English, I began to look more closely at the materials I use in the classroom. I noticed a focus on the elimination or modification of local Englishes and an overcorrection of accent and tone. The quest to sound “like a native” (but who is a native anyway?) has stigmatized valid varieties of speech and alienated whole populations based on their pronunciation (Jeong & Lindemann, 2025). 

In classroom practice, focusing on achieving “correct” English can shape how students engage, how they approach learning, and how they understand their own place within the language. Some MLEs become cautious about speaking, focusing on avoiding mistakes rather than expressing ideas. Others participate less when they feel unsure about how their language will be perceived (Jeong et al., 2025).

It is important to note that MLEs are not only going to be speaking English to Americans, British people, or Australians. Businesspeople in Vietnam will have meetings and collaborations with Indian organizations. Developers in Singapore will consult alongside engineers from the Gulf. This means that our learners benefit more from hearing a variety of Englishes that reflect what the English-speaking world actually sounds like (Jie & Zeng, 2025).

Research on Global Englishes in language teaching has shown that even limited exposure to a range of accents can improve both comprehension of and attitudes toward different speakers (Jeong et al., 2025). When MLEs encounter unfamiliar accents, they may initially perceive them as more difficult; however, research suggests that actual understanding can remain high even when perceived difficulty varies (Thir, 2023; Jie & Zeng, 2025). This distinction between perceived comprehensibility and actual intelligibility is important for classroom practice.

Ideas for Integrating Global Englishes in Your Classroom

So what can teachers do to improve this relationship with English and its many varieties? Thankfully, adapting materials to reflect Global Englishes does not require a complete redesign. In many cases, small shifts can open up space for a wider representation of language.

Listening activities provide a natural entry point. In addition to textbook recordings, teachers can include short clips featuring speakers from different linguistic backgrounds. There are clips of airport announcements in Thailand, sample speaker recordings in Kenya, and street interviews around the world that can all be incorporated into daily planning.

Here are some online resources to get you started:

• • • The International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA) includes audio samples from more than 130 countries.
      
      
    • Teaching & Materials With a Global Englishes Focus is a website launched in 2025 by the University of Hawaii’s Department of Second Language Studies.
      
      
    • English Teachers Everywhere offers a collection of free listening clips with different varieties of Global Englishes, from street interviews to airport announcements.
      
      
    • The companion website for Introducing Global Englishes (Galloway & Rose, 2015) offers more than 70 hours of free classroom activities based on the content of the book, including listening, discussion, research, and extension tasks.

When students engage with these materials, keep the focus on understanding meaning. Over time, students will likely become more comfortable navigating unfamiliar accents and speaking styles. This approach also helps students develop confidence in their own localized English as it gives legitimacy to the way their community speaks and understands one another without diminishing its value (Jeong & Lindemann, 2025).

Sample Student-Generated Activities

MLEs bring their own linguistic knowledge into the classroom, but this is not always reflected in instructional materials. Incorporating examples that connect to students’ experiences can make lessons feel more relevant. For example, presenting a textbook dialogue alongside a locally used version of English can prompt discussion about how language varies across contexts. Moments that are often labeled as errors can instead become opportunities to explore different regional patterns in language use.

Activity 1: Error or Variation?

A simple way to incorporate student-generated language variation is through a sample survey for individual analysis or group discussion. Craft a short table of sample sentences you’ve observed in student writing or speaking production. Then, invite students to look at each example and decide: error or variation?

Including student-generated content can further broaden representation. By recording short interviews, sharing written work, or building activities around peer language use, teachers can guide students to engage with English as it is used within their own community (Jeong & Lindemann, 2025).

Activity 2: Listening for Global Englishes

Here is another example activity:

The above is a sample of Singaporean English recorded by a student in one of my online classes. To use this in a classroom setting, lead students through the following exercise:

1. 1. 1. Have students listen to the audio recording while following along with the transcript.
         
         
      2. Individually or in small groups, ask students to identify linguistic features that differ from the varieties of English they are most familiar with.
         
         
      3. Use reflection questions to discuss the contexts in which these forms are meaningful and appropriate. Rather than immediately labeling these features as “errors,” ask students to consider how they function within the speaker’s community and communicative goals.

Reflection questions for this activity might include the following:

• • • What features of this English variety stand out to you? Why?
      
      
    • Which parts of the text would be considered nonstandard in other English-speaking contexts? Would that necessarily make them incorrect?
      
      
    • What clues does the text provide about the speaker’s linguistic background or community?
      
      
    • How might the meaning of the passage or the relationship between speakers change if these features were replaced with forms associated with another variety of English?
      
      
    • In what situations might this variety of English be more appropriate or effective than another variety?

Through this activity, students can explore the contexts where Global Englishes are relevant and consider how speakers might choose different varieties in different communicative situations. This kind of inclusion reflects the reality that English is shaped by its users. It also reinforces the idea that students are participants in the language rather than passive learners who must simply conform to a single external standard.

Guiding Questions for Lesson Planning

When reviewing lessons or planning classroom activities, the following questions can help guide teachers’ choices of materials and activities:

• • • What kinds of English are represented here? This question will help teachers look more critically at whether the lesson material includes, or at least acknowledges, any of the following: various Global Englishes, academic English, professional registers, social dialects, or the English forms used within students’ communities.
      
      
    • What aspects of communication are students being asked to focus on? Is the focus on fluency or accuracy? Receptive skills or productive skills? Your choices will impact the contexts and expectations for output in the lesson.
      
      
    • How does this activity connect to real-world language use? Authenticity is a major factor for successful language acquisition. The goal of any activity should be to prepare students for using English outside the classroom walls. Engaging in authentic communicative activities, such as negotiating a transaction, participating in a professional meeting, understanding an online news article, or engaging in a cross-cultural discussion, will help students improve both production and reception of more English varieties (Thir, 2023).
      
      
    • In what ways are students’ own linguistic resources included? Teachers should consider how to leverage the assets MLEs bring to the classroom, including their home languages, their existing knowledge of other languages, and their unique communicative practices.

Conclusion

The varieties of English that we present in our classrooms can either validate or challenge mindsets about the people who speak the language outside of it. When our students encounter only standard, dominant Englishes in their textbooks, homework assignments, and classroom activities, they may begin to question whether their own ways of speaking are valid. When they encounter a wider range of Global Englishes, however, they can develop more confidence in their own English use and more understanding of the speakers they will encounter outside the classroom.

Though preferences for certain English accents can persist, shaped by long-standing beliefs about language, race, class, and social mobility (Jeong & Lindemann, 2025; Kang & Kostromitina, 2025), bringing Global Englishes into the ELT classroom creates opportunities for discussion, reflection, and critical examination of those assumptions. It also prepares our students to succeed in the real—not ideal—world of authentic English communication.

References

Assi, K. (2022, April 19). A huge and helpful guide to 67 English speaking countries (and more!). Berlitz. https://www.berlitz.com/blog/english-speaking-countries

Galloway, N., & Rose, H. (2015). Introducing global Englishes. Routledge.

Jeong, H., & Lindemann, S. (2025). Beyond ideologies of nativeness in the intelligibility principle for L2 English pronunciation: A corpus-supported review. System, 129, Article 103599. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2025.103599

Jeong, H., Lindemann, S., Forsberg, J., & Ribbeklint, H. (2025). Fostering global Englishes listeners: Addressing understanding and attitudes at a Swedish upper‐secondary school. TESOL Quarterly, 59(4), 2234–2264. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.70007

Jie, L., & Zeng, J. (2025). The intelligibility of South Asian Englishes to Chinese pre-service English teachers: Implications for sustainable language education. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, Article 1047. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05458-8

Kang, O., & Kostromitina, M. (2025). Equality, diversity and inclusion: Different varieties of accents in Aptis English listening tests. British Council. https://doi.org/10.57884/QV3J-5H54

Thir, V. (2023). Co-text, context, and listening proficiency as crucial variables in intelligibility among nonnative users of English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 45(5), 1210–1231.