Speakers were recruited by placing advertisements on computer bulletin boards, in the University student newspaper `Varsity', in the Engineering Department's newsletters, and on notice boards in common rooms throughout the University. The advertisement asked for native speakers of UK English who would like to contribute to speech research by reading out newspaper sentences for an hour. Each speaker was offered a reward of £5 for their efforts.
The age distribution of training speakers is displayed below. The age distribution of the test speaker population is similar. A concerted effort was made to attract as wide a range of regional accents as possible. However, we were obviously limited to those speakers who lived or worked in the Cambridge area.
Age Range Distribution of Training Speakers
