Dear All,
I'm attaching, below, a message from an MA student in Macedonia who is
looking for English native speakers to rate and comment on samples of
Macedonians speaking English.
If interested, please get in touch with her directly.
She's particularly short of British speakers.
Jonathan

Dear Colleague,

My name is Anastazija Kirkova-Naskova, Teaching Assistant in English
Phonetics and Phonology at Skopje University. I am writing this e-mail
to ask for your co-operation in an on-line phonetic experiment related
to cross-language segmental phonology. Let me briefly introduce you to
the context and the relevance of the current study.

This experiment is part of my MA thesis/study which concentrates on
Macedonian-English learner language, in particular its phonological
aspect. It aims to describe the phonological phenomena that are most
striking in the Macedonian-English accented speech as perceived by
native speakers of English. It also examines the relationship between
speech perception and speech production in the acquisition of certain
English phonemes which are difficult for Macedonian learners of English.

There are several reasons why I have committed myself to investigating
Macedonian-English accented speech. First, there are few research
studies in this area and those that exist are out-dated. They mainly
adopt the contrastive approach, address aspects related to production
only and none of them base their findings on spoken recorded materials.

Second, my teaching experience shows that the pronunciation problems
Macedonians face when learning English are very complex, Macedonian
being a typologically distant language from English. For the past
three years, I have asked my students who attended the course in
English Phonetics and Phonology to reflect on their pronunciation and
share their views on the sounds they find difficult. The preliminary
results show remarkable consistency in their answers. They confirm the
findings of the contrastive analysis studies about problems with
non-existing sounds. They also reveal that it is the similar sounds
that are far more problematic (especially the vowels) and that
exposure to different English varieties plays a crucial role in
stigmatizing their foreign-accented speech. In my study, I am
interested to find out whether their speech shows systematic
characteristics, whether these features are equally perceived by
native speakers as non-native and potentially impeding
intelligibility, and whether they can be treated as markers of
Macedonian-English accented speech.

Finally, the pedagogical and research implications of the study are
evident; the results can be incorporated in the course syllabus and
appropriate exercises designed as well as be used as a basis for
further research. In addition, the study will revive phonological
research in Macedonia, (I seem currently to be alone in my interest)
in the area, and the methodology can be adapted for investigating the
phonology of the Macedonian language.

The successful completion of my study depends, however, on the number
of native speakers willing to participate in the experiment. Having in
mind the limitations I encountered when designing the methodology (no
financial support and lack of phonetically trained experts in
Macedonia) and the benefits of the approach (wider audience, fast
results), I have developed an online application with audio files and
a set of questions.

This consists of recordings of three tasks (a word list, a passage and
free speech); the listener is expected to rate the subjects’ accent
and make comments related to their speech. The total duration of the
speech stimuli is approximately one hour and the overall duration of
the experiment depends on the listener’s personal pace. The
application is expected to be completed in January 2009, and the
results to be gathered in the period between January 28^th – February
20^th , 2009 (subject to agreement).

I would be extremely grateful if you would consider participating in
this experiment. Your contribution to this study as a native speaker
and an expert phonetician is of crucial significance. If you are
available in this period and willing to help please contact me so that
I can keep you up-dated. In case of affirmative answer on your part, I
would also appreciate if you could tell me which period (or exact
date) is most convenient for you so that I can plan the dynamics of
the project.

In case you are familiar with similar studies involving
online-conducted phonetic experiments, I would also be very grateful
if you could share the details.

Thank you for your understanding and support. Looking forward to
receiving your reply.

Sincerely yours,

Anastazija Kirkova-Naskova
Teaching Assistant
Department of English Language and Literature
Faculty of Philology
Ss Cyril and Methodius University, Skopje

address: Nobelova 12A/6
1000 Skopje
R Macedonia

phone: +389 70 350 531
e-mail: akirkova@... <mailto:akirkova@...>