“With more than 37 dialects spoken across its four nations, the UK is an unusual country when it comes to linguistic diversity…All this linguistic diversity can be confusing even for native speakers of English, but for international students who come to the UK to pursue academic careers in English-speaking universities, this variety of strange-seeming accents and dialects can make their educational experience that little bit more difficult”. Article based on an interesting research paper on linguistic variation in language learning classrooms and the the role of regional variation and ‘non-standard’ varieties.
Here’s the original paper.