Multivarietal language teaching

Dialectal variation has often been ignored in the literature on language teaching, under the presumption that only the standard variety (of some particular country) need be taught. The present paper begins by reviewing a small but growing body of literature that stresses the importance of familiarizing language learners with the sorts of dialectal variation that they are likely to encounter as they come to use the language, just as first-language speakers do. It then goes on to describe research in Indonesia that suggests that it is important for learners to appreciate not merely dialectal variation, but even choices between distinct languages in that situation. The paper then considers how familiarizing students with such variety — we’ll call it “multivarietal teaching” — might actually be implemented by individual teachers who are typically fluent in only a single dialect, whether or not additional languages.