Hindko and Gujari. c - SIL International

206
Appendix A Methodologies
Thus the RTT aims to be a closer reflection of a subject’s comprehension of the
language itself, not of his or her memory, intelligence, or reasoning. 3
In order to ensure that the text is a fair test of the intelligibility of the
linguistic variety in focus, other speakers of the same local variety are asked to
listen to the text and answer the questions. If they are able to do that, it is
assumed that the story is an adequate sample of local speech, and that the
questions are readily answerable by those for whom this speech form is native.
This testing of subjects in their native speech form for the purpose of test
validation is often referred to as hometown testing.
It is possible that a subject may be unable to answer the test questions
correctly simply because he does not understand what is expected of him. This
is especially true with unsophisticated subjects or those unacquainted with testtaking
procedures. Therefore, a very short (pre-test) story with four questions is
recorded in the local variety before beginning the actual testing, in order to
acquaint the subject with the test procedures. If he is able to answer these pretest
questions correctly, it is assumed that he is capable of functioning as a
suitable subject. Each subject then participates in the hometown test in his
native speech form before participating in recorded text tests in non-native
varieties. Occasionally, even after the pre-test, a subject fails to perform
adequately on an already validated hometown test. Performances of such
subjects were eliminated from the final evaluation, the assumption being that
uncontrollable factors unrelated to the intelligibility of speech forms are
skewing such test results. 4 Thus, validated hometown tests are used for subject
screening, in an attempt to ensure that recorded text testing results reflect as
closely as possible the relative levels of comprehensibility of the speech forms
represented.
Test tapes are prepared for each location where a test is to be
administered (test point). The hometown test tape includes (a) a short
introduction in the local speech form to explain the purpose of the test, (b) the
pre-test to orient and screen test subjects, (c) the hometown test text in its
entirety followed by a repeat of the text, in short sections, with the relevant test
questions and adequate pauses inserted in appropriate locations.
The non-native test tapes are similar, omitting the screening elements
from the hometown test tape. A short introduction in the local speech form
reminding subjects of the test procedures precedes each recorded text. Then the
recorded narrative in the non-native variety is given in its entirety, followed by
the comprehension questions, now translated into the local speech form for that
test point and with the relevant part of the non-native text repeated before each
question.
When speakers of one linguistic variety have had no previous contact
with that represented in the recorded text, the test scores of ten subjects tend to
be more similar — especially when scores are in the higher ranges. Such
3 Recorded texts and associated comprehension questions will vary in
terms of their relative difficulty and complexity or in terms of the clarity of the
recording. Comparisons of RTT results from different texts need to be made
cautiously and in the context of other indicators of intelligibility.
4 For the purposes of this research, recorded text test subjects performing
at levels of less than 80 percent on their hometown test were eliminated from
further testing or were excluded from the analysis.