Rating Study
Instructions:
Thanks for your interest in our language study!
Before you start the experiment, we would like to inform you about the procedure of the experiment and the instructions for your task. We have a raffle of three Amazon gift cards each worth EUR20 (or a gift card worth the same amount in your respective national currency) among the first 40 participants.
Procedure
We first need to gather some information about your (language) background. We would be glad if you could share this general information with us. Your name and email address is only used for the purpose to contact you in case you\'re one of the three lucky participants to win our EUR20 Amazon gift card (or a gift card worth the same amount in your respective national currency). We will delete your name and e-mail address as soon as the experiment is over. No information is passed on or used in any other way beyond that. Your name and email address is processed independently from the results of the study.
Instructions
Practice stage 1: Judging line lengths
There are two short practice stages before the study begins. In the first you estimate the lengths of lines. You assign them numbers expressing their length relative to two reference lines.
| Reference line 1: this line is 20 long: |
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| Reference line 2: this line is 30 long: |
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| The length of this red line lies between the two reference lines. You could give it a score of 25. |
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| This blue line is perhaps worth 36. |
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| And this green line could be worth 18. |
The green line with a score of 18 is thus half as long as the blue line with 36. Each new judgement is given relative to the previous ones.
Practice stage 2: Judging example sentences
Below you will see example sentences appearing in the experiment window. Some will sound very natural, but others will sound very unnatural. Your task is to express how natural they sound, by giving them a score.
Here too you should give your judgements relative to references examples.
| Reference example 1: This sentence is worth 20. | |
| The father fetches for the children it. | 20 |
| Reference example 2: This sentence is worth 30. | |
| The father fetches the children the food. | 30 |
You should judge all subsequent sentences relative to the naturalness of these reference examples. So, for example:
| The father fetches the children it. | |
| This example might be worth 25. | |
| The father fetches the food the children. | |
| And this bad one only perhaps 15. | |
| The father fetches the food for the children. | |
| This sounds very natural and could be worth a 32. |
Major points
- You can use any whole numbers or decimals. Numbers above 30 and below 20 are fine too.
- Try to distinguish all the different degrees of naturalness that you find in the examples.
- There are no right or wrong answers. We want to learn your spontaneous feelings about the sentences. You don\'t need to think too long about each one.
- Imagine somebody saying the sentences to you. We are basically more interested in the spoken language than the written language.
- Don\'t worry too much if you make a mistake or have second thoughts. Just keep on with the experiment.