Listen to the World: Raising Awareness of English Varieties

With the increase use of English by people in all parts of the world in the past few decades, the goals for learning English as a second language has been changed from ‘obtaining native-like proficiency’ to ‘gaining proficiency in dealing with English varieties.’ To provide opportunities for Thai students of English to be exposed to the varieties and raise their awareness of the varieties, this article exemplified how World Englishes-based listening materials could be developed and used in English classes. Hello, World Englishes! was developed using the framework proposed by Jolly and Bolitho (2011) and Marlina (2013) and evaluated by experts and practitioners in the relevant field. The evaluation results were positive. The experts and teachers saw the needs for such materials and agreed that the developed materials could be used as listening materials to raise awareness of English varieties of secondary school students in Thailand.

Activity Type: Workshop