Take part in research

In summer/autumn 2025 there will be an opportunity to take part in ongoing research by Sam Hellmuth.
Sam's work featured in our 2024 workshop case study on on prosodic performance and the Queen’s speech.
Teachers and students are now invited to help with Sam's new research project which looks at factors affecting perception of voices across the lifespan...
... then to join an interactive webinar to see the results!

How to get involved

Use our lesson starter (lead in task below) to introduce the activity and situate it within the A level curriculum
- This year's project explores themes of change in language use over time in an individual versus a speech community, as well as perception of age and listeners' awareness (or not) of language change.
Register at the link above to receive the survey link to share with students so they can fill in the research survey in class or for homework.
- The first part of the survey asks for basic social information (e.g. age, education or job etc).
- The main survey asks you to listen to a series of speech recordings and estimate the age of the speaker at the time of recording.

Your students then share the survey link with other students, friends and family.
Optional: Use our extension task below to explore other types of language features that may vary by age, to help your students think about what types of features they could explore in their NEA.
Optional: Discuss as a local team what you expect the results of the survey to show (and why)

Join school/college based teams from around the country in an interactive online event with Sam Hellmuth to see the perception survey results plus some Q&A.
You will be able to join the webinar if you haven't taken part in the survey, if you wish (but you can't take the survey after the webinar, as you'll know too much about the survey design!).

Can you estimate the age of a speaker?

Different types of language features that vary by age

Q: Can we join the live online event if we don't take part in the research at all and/or don't manage to get more people to take part locally?
- A: Yes! That's fine - of course. You are welcome to sign up just to come to the online event to hear about the research on the day.
Q: Can we take part in the survey if we can't come to the online event?
- A: Yes! That's also fine - of course. You will still need to register at the link above, so we can send you link to the online survey.

For questions about the research, the classroom materials or the online event please contact: englishlanguagetoolkit@york.ac.uk

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