“You say po-tay-to, I say po-tah-to”: Integrating variation into the English Language Classroom

English speakers today do not speak like they did during Shakespeare’s lifetime, and those in England sound different from those in the United States, India, and the Netherlands. The field of Variationist Sociolinguistics studies how language varies across space and time. In this interactive lecture, we will discuss the main ideas behind this field of study and how some of its findings can be implemented in the English language classroom to raise students’ language awareness.

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