error gravity research project

[Benjamin Rifkin]

Dear Colleagues:

As some of you may have noticed in an announcement in the latest AATSEEL
Newsletter, I am seeking participants for a research project on error
gravity in Russian.

Participants should be instructors of Russian of any nationality (residing
anywhere in the world) or native speakers of Russian of any profession
(residing anywhere in the world.)

Participation requires downloading some files, listening to excerpts of
learner discourse in Russian, and ranking the learners' discourse (best
speaker of Russian to worst).  The files can be found at:

http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/slavic/rifkin/errorgravity/index.html

The web page provides an option to download the program with either an
English- or Russian-language interface.

Downloading on a university ethernet connection takes only a couple of
minutes, but downloading by modem takes about an hour or so.

Listening to the speech samples and ranking them takes about 20 minutes
(there are 10 samples and each is about 1 minute long.)

The project works on Windows 95, Windows 3.1 and PowerMacintoshes only (NOT
on older Macintoshes and not on UNIX platforms.)

Thank you very much for spreading the word.  I would be especially
appreciative if you could alert colleagues in Russia to this project, as I
have had few responses from Russia as of yet.

With thanks,

Ben Rifkin

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Benjamin Rifkin

Associate Professor of Slavic Languages
Coordinator of Russian-Language Instruction

Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1432 Van Hise Hall, 1220 Linden Dr.
Madison, WI  53706  USA

voice:  608/262-1623
fax:  608/265-2814
e-mail:  brifkin at facstaff.wisc.edu

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