ABSTRACT
The cultures and varieties of English-speaking countries such as the United States and Great Britain still dominate the English language teaching (ELT) materials as the content of many ELT books solely reflect the characters and customs of these Western cultures (McKay, 2012). Given the need to represent linguistic and cultural variety in the English classroom, this practical section aimed to present a sample listening and speaking lesson about New Year’s celebrations across cultures that gives teacher candidates an idea about how they can design their own supplementary materials to promote intercultural communicative competence, moving beyond textbooks that advertise Western ideologies per se. The observations of this lesson as taught in four different ESL classrooms of a US university showed that listening to different varieties of English and discussing different cultures was more motivating and productive for the students than being exposed to solely the Standard English and the American culture.
