Thursday, December 12, 2013

Recorded Text Testing (RTT)

Often surveyors use Recorded Text Testing to measure how well
speakers of one dialect understand a related one. To give you a
feel for what it is like, have someone read this story to you. Stop
at each number and ask the corresponding question. Now
imagine it is in a dialect you only partially understand.

How much do you understand?
Last week I was wondering who would help me with my thesis
fieldwork. I wrote to my friends around the world to ask them to pray
with me. (1) Amazingly, even before I knew who would help, I felt a
deep peace. I got on a bus and went to Cross River State. (2) It was
good I didn’t delay, because the preparation work took longer than I
had expected. Even so, God helped me. (3) By “chance” I met the
same man who told me stories in 2009, so I was able to reuse a test that
we made back then.
Then one morning my wife and her new friend Rachel came to help me
get the tests ready. (4) Even though they had never done the work
before, we were able to very well. (5) They related very well with the
students and made them feel at ease. (6)
Rachel had to leave, but my colleague Uche came that same night. (7)
He has done this kind of work before, and is very good at it. That first
night after Uche came, we were working in one town, and it was getting
late. We decided to just try to go to the next town anyway. (8)
When we reached the pastor’s house it was almost dark, (9) but when
he heard about our work, he welcomed us with open arms. He uses the
local language in his church (10) and we enjoyed sweet fellowship
together. We also worked late into the night. Like that, like that God
guided us until we finished the work.

Questions
1) What did he ask his friends to do?
2) How did he go to Cross River State?
3) Who helped him?
4) When did his wife and Rachel come?
5) How did they do the work?
6) How did the students feel?
7) When did Uche come?
8) Where did they decide to go?
9) Whose house did they reach?
10) What does he use in the church?

Possible answers (some variation may be accepted):
1-pray, 2-on a bus, 3-God, 4-one morning, 5-very well, 6-at ease, 7-that same night, 8-the next town, 9-the pastor’s, 10-the local language.

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