Please help me with my MA thesis by filling out a (2nd) questionnaire online

[henryxcrudos]

I need a lot of people to fill out my 2nd online questionnaire for my MA thesis in English linguistics.

This time it's about English Grammar Use in Conversation, and it's totally, like, m.u.l.t.i.m.e.d.i.a.
Well, you'll get to listen to myself trying to speak Keira Knightley English. 

It's not very long, and I reckon it might (again) take 30 mins. to complete, but you would help me a lot (a L.O.T.) if you took the time and filled it out. Especially if you did it soon-ish as my deadline is 31 August and I still need time for the analysis ;-).

It's found here:
http://sbothe.userpage.fu-berlin.de/conversation/

PLEASE HELP ME BY COMPLETING THIS QUESTIONNAIRE!
And sending the link to anyone you can think of...

Thanks a lot in advance!
Cheers!

[roarde]

I happily participated in your first questionnaire. Happy to do so.

You've chosen the proprietary format I despise second-most, and apparently to play only audio. You lost me.

[henryxcrudos]

Yea, I can totally see what you mean. Thing is, it was simply the easiest way to realize this (with my limited knowledge of audio embedding). I really needed a very simple player very quickly, and this is what I found first.

For websites, I usually prefer to keep my nose out of Flash (can be so annoying). This time, I didn't feel I had better options.

But perhaps you could point me towards a way to do such things that doesn't include proprietary formats? I mean it, I'm honestly interested in that kind of stuff. It won't probably make it into this questionnaire, but I'd be more than happy to know how to do it differently in the future.

[roarde]

A sincere thank you for verifying what I've known all along:

I really needed a very simple player very quickly, and this is what I found first.

No criticism of you here. It reflects mainly on application developers. There are several better formats for what you're doing, but those supporting them haven't made it easy enough. Often, developers who support choice offer too many choices to be understandable. Perhaps an automatic default for everything, and a side note that more is available, with a "more choices" button.

Your response is appreciated, and so well put that I attempted to take the quiz. Flash (yes, I have it) crashed, probably due to lack of horsepower. It's not your quiz, it happens often. Not my reason for despising flash.

But the thread is yours, and rather than "flash vs. whatever", it's about soliciting quiz-takers for help towards your MA.

1. Anyone who can should take the quiz. I know I'd want and, in this kind forum, expect fairly good participation.
2. Speaking of that kindness, you might consider changing the thread's title to one that directly asks for help. Your title for the
   first quiz was good, just change it to tell how to help, such as:  Please take quiz (#2) to help with my MA thesis. May
   get even more attention.
3. Reflects 1. Anyone. The quiz asks whether English is one's first language, so I assume that those who first learned
   another tongue are welcome and useful.
4. This one can't be fixed now without skewing your results, not to mention that it's quite late to do so. Despite your statement
    that punctuation is not to be considered, it's impossible not to do so, at least for native speakers. We grew up "hearing"
    punctuation. I found it interesting to compare the quiz's punctuation with that on Tropic of Vector. There are some
    supposed punctuation errors on Tropic, but it "sounds" much better and more natural than the quiz.

Best of luck, wish I could help more.

[henryxcrudos]

There are several better formats for what you're doing

What would they be? I was actually thinking about releasing an annotated template version of my PHP scripts (with an open source alternative to the Flash parts obviously ) after I've finished my thesis. But if there are better ideas and scripts around, I wouldn't bother obviously...

Often, developers who support choice offer too many choices to be understandable. Perhaps an automatic default for everything, and a side note that more is available, with a "more choices" button.

I had two reasons to actually ask the questions the way I asked them. a) Statistical reasons. I have done an online questionnaire before, fairly strictly adhering to Grrenbaum & Quirk's "Data elicitation in English linguistics". That thing was waaaay to long and the usage statistics have shon that most subjects "dropped out" before they finished the first page. That's why I kept it comparably nice, short and simple this time. b) Scientific reasons. I can't say too much about that here (for reasons I can let you know via PN if you're interested). But the options I gave where standardized along guidelines developed by linguists. Thus not more options .

1. Anyone who can should take the quiz. I know I'd want and, in this kind forum, expect fairly good participation.

I really appreciate your point, same as I do this forum. It's great! And has helped me get enough results for my first questionnaire...

2. Speaking of that kindness, you might consider changing the thread's title to one that directly asks for help. Your title for the first quiz was good, just change it to tell how to help, such as:  Please take quiz (#2) to help with my MA thesis. May get even more attention.

Done . Makes perfect sense as well.

3. Reflects 1. Anyone. The quiz asks whether English is one's first language, so I assume that those who first learned another tongue are welcome and useful.

Indeed. Whatever I help I can get is greatly appreciated.

4. This one can't be fixed now without skewing your results, not to mention that it's quite late to do so. Despite your statement that punctuation is not to be considered, it's impossible not to do so, at least for native speakers. We grew up "hearing" punctuation. I found it interesting to compare the quiz's punctuation with that on Tropic of Vector. There are some supposed punctuation errors on Tropic, but it "sounds" much better and more natural than the quiz.

Thanks very much for that remark, as I wouldn't have thought it does actually matter that much. I will definitely take your point into consideration when doing the analysis. The reason why I included the statement is that the example texts were taken from natural languge corpora, and I found some of them awkwardly punctuated, but they are "real life" examples from texts (spoken and written) by native speakers, and I didn't want to mess around with them as a non-native speaker.

And also thanks for your remark about ToV, which I've taken as positive feedback. On another note, I wish I had more time for the blog at the moment, but that will get better after I'm finished with the important stuff .

Thanks!

[henryxcrudos]

And another post to all users, so that not everyone has to read through my longish explanations above:

It would be very much appreciated if you would be willing to fill out the questionnaire, as I still need some more results . THANKS!

THe URL is http://sbothe.userpage.fu-berlin.de/conversation/.

[davec51]

I didn't complete the questionnaire because I didn't fill any comments in the audio section. Sorry. The fact that the voices were not native speakers of English, with a British accent superimposed on Teutonic consonant sounds, made it impossible for me to hear the sentences as normal conversation.

[henryxcrudos]

Haha. Thanks a lot anyway!
Yea, the audio material is far from perfect, and had time permitted I would've asked a native speaker to do them for me. But in the end, your response is a result in itself and will find its way into the thesis. So: Thank you very much indeed.

Hope others might be able to jump that barrier though .