We would like to invite you to take part in a research project which involves the completion of an online questionnaire. Your participation is entirely voluntary and you are free to decline to participate or to stop completing the questionnaire at any time, even if you have agreed to take part initially. However, once you have submitted your completed questionnaire online, you will no longer be able to withdraw your responses as there will be no way of linking your responses back to you.

What is the study about?
A lot is known about how people in majority English-speaking countries such as England and the United States learn and speak English, but we know very little about how English is learned and spoken in richly multilingual countries such as South Africa. In fact, Africa has been almost entirely ignored in large-scale studies of language learning. By completing this survey, you will be helping us to find out how the English that South Africans speak differs from other types of English spoken around the world. 

Why are you being asked to participate?
All South African residents 18 years and older who speak English are eligible to participate.

What will participating in the study entail? 
In the survey, you will read a number of English sentences, and you will decide which sentences are grammatical (correct) and which are not. You will also answer some questions about your language background so that we can understand how different experiences with English relate to differences in grammaticality judgments. The survey should take no longer than 10 minutes to complete.

Will you benefit from taking part in this research?
The knowledge resulting from this research will be informative for teaching and policymaking. After completing the survey, you as a participant can choose to enter a lucky draw to win one of 60 R250 Takealot vouchers. Your email address, if provided, will be stored separately from your survey responses and will be deleted as soon as the lucky draw has been completed and the winners have been contacted. 

Are there any risks involved in your taking part in this research?
Your survey responses will be anonymous and confidential (i.e., they will be accessible only to the researchers). 

You can contact the Principal Investigator of this study, Dr Robyn Berghoff, at berghoff@sun.ac.za if you have any questions about this study or encounter any problems.
This study has been approved by the Research Ethics Committee: Social, Behavioural and Education Research at Stellenbosch University (Project ID 27095). The study will be conducted according to the ethical guidelines and principles of South Africa’s Department of Health Ethics in Health Research: Principles, Processes and Studies (2015).

Rights of research participants
You have the right to decline answering any questions and you can exit the survey at any time without giving a reason. If you have questions, concerns or complaints regarding your rights as a research participant, please contact Mrs Clarissa Robertson [cgraham@sun.ac.za; 021 808 9183] at the Division for Research Development.

If you would like to keep a copy of this consent form, follow these instructions to take a screenshot of this page.

By clicking START SURVEY 
you are confirming that you are:
- over 18 years old;  
- have read and understood the above explanation about the study; and 
- you agree to participate. 
- You also understand that your participation in this study is strictly voluntary.