Orphanide, I., Chatzipanagiotidou, A. & Dinas, K.D. (2020). Teachers of Greek in a diglossia situation: to teach or not to teach the Cypriot Greek dialect to foreigners?, Journal of Applied Languages and Linguistics, 4(2), ALS House Publications. Athens, Greece, pp. 128-141 

Ferguson’s (1959) definition of diglossia characterizes the current sociolinguistic situation in the island country of Cyprus. Standard Modern Greek (SMG) is the High Variety and Cypriot Greek (CG) is the Low Variety. Many immigrants come to Cyprus seeking a better life. The question of whether they need to be exposed to CG while learning SMG in order to improve their level of communicative competence in Cyprus is researched here through qualitative semi-structured interviews with seven experienced teachers of Greek as a Second language (GSL) to adults. The need to expose students to part of CG, for their level of communicative competence to improve, is recognized by all teachers. Teachers’ attitude towards CG was associated with the way they treat the diglossia issue when teaching GSL. A positive attitude towards CG was associated with higher likelihood of addressing the issue of diglossia in their teaching practice and feeling the need for the State to take a stance. Comparative methodology is used by all teachers, irrespective of their attitude. In conclusion, when teaching GSL to adults, the main linguistic variety used should be SMG, but partial exposure to CG can be adopted from the beginner level.