Speakers

These nine speakers were located, interviewed, and recorded within their residence halls. All 9 speakers were women between the ages of 21 and 31 currently studying at Växjö University. Excluding the Swedish speaker, they had been in Sweden for a time period of between 2 months and 1 year. All nine speakers were studying a subject other than English and had not studied English since high school. Questions were also asked that involved if, how, when, and where they had spent time in English-speaking or other foreign countries. Of the 9 speakers, 3 of them (Spain, Poland, Germany) had spent 2 months in an English-speaking country (vacation/working) while the remaining 6 had spent less than a month in an English-speaking country. Also, the women from France, Poland, and Germany had spent one month or more in a non-English-speaking foreign country. All nine women classified their English as Intermediate or Advanced and agreed that they had a typical foreign accent in English for a person from their country. The recordings were placed in the following order: Germany, Portugal, France, Poland, Sweden, Spain, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands. No control was made for age of learning, years of formal instruction, learning aptitude, order influence, or for the fact that inclusion or exclusion of one voice or accent may affect judgements of those remaining.