You could try the VOICE corpus at https://www.univie.ac.at/voice/

There are full transcriptions of a large number of conversations in a range of settings, as well as audio files of many of them. The ELFA corpus (English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings) is also now available, both transcripts and audio files. Just google ELFA corpus for a link to them. In both cases, the transcripts would provide a useful basis for developing teaching materials. Other than these suggestions, if in the near future you'll be at any international conferences where there will be speakers from a wide range of non-Anglophone countries, e.g. the 11th ELF conference (King's College London, 4-7 July 2018) you could ask for permission to record speakers there - though you'd have to make your own transcriptions!

I would strongly suggest you to try to make use uf "BBC Podcasts" which provide authentic audio materials via http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts.

BBC has very good learning materials indeed.

I think what Ali is also looking for are recordings by non-native speakers. This is very relevant indeed. In today's world we meet many people who may be able to have important thoughts to share (in English, which most of us understand), but as non-native speakers they may have accents unfamiliar to us.

A very learned Italian friend of mine comes to mind, whose rich vocabulary of English was certainly better than mine, but his accent kept me guessing what he meant, sometimes. The same can probably be said of my Austrian accent: p's become b's, and we are generally hopeless with words starting with j, g, ch, ... jest, gist, Charles - the initial sounds are all one to us.

Then there is intonation. A Texan, an Australian, a South African, a Scot or Irish - all native speakers - have widely varying intonation. We need to be able to understand "BBC - English", but also other varieties.

It seems to me an excellent idea to listen - in addition to native speakers - also to non-native ones. What we now need is relevant learning material.

Who else is interested in a follow-up?

You could try the VOICE corpus at https://www.univie.ac.at/voice/

There are full transcriptions of a large number of conversations in a range of settings, as well as audio files of many of them. The ELFA corpus (English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings) is also now available, both transcripts and audio files. Just google ELFA corpus for a link to them. In both cases, the transcripts would provide a useful basis for developing teaching materials. Other than these suggestions, if in the near future you'll be at any international conferences where there will be speakers from a wide range of non-Anglophone countries, e.g. the 11th ELF conference (King's College London, 4-7 July 2018) you could ask for permission to record speakers there - though you'd have to make your own transcriptions!

Just to add to my point about making your own recordings at conferences: the colloquium on ELF and dis/empowerment that I’m convening at ELF11 will have L1 speakers of Chinese, Vietnamese, Chilean Spanish, Italian, and British English, which rather neatly reflects the 4:1 global ratio of non-native English speakers to native, though there might also be an L1 speaker of Thai. I’m pretty sure the members of the colloquium wold be happy for you to record it, and it would also have the advantage that the content is likely to be of interest and relevance to your tertiary level students.

Dear Jenny,

Thank you for your suggestions. I have not been aware that the audio files of ELFA corpus are now available for researchers to download. That's good news. I'll definitely try to include them in my classes. I did a kind of inital survey with the students asking them about their preferences for speakers in the listening activties, and it came as no surprise that the majority opted for listening to NESs. Yet, I'm still determined to expose them to a wde range of speakers :)

As for conference recordings, I'm afraid I will not be able to make it to London this year owing to some budgetting problems our instittuion is facing currenlty. The instituion is no longer willing to support our scientific activities abraod. And it is rather unaffordable for me to meet all the expenses without a funding. However, I will try to do what you suggest in the international conferences I'll be attending in different parts of Turkey.

Best.

Ali.

Dear Professor Jenkins,

We used the COBUILD project English materials a couple of decades ago here in Colombia at Universidad de Nariño, and I believe there were some instances of English foreign talk in the audio materials for that text. The speakers were to sound authentic english speakers not necessarily native.

I hope this can be of any help to your projec for which I would like to contribute.

I remember excellent and productive meeting we had in your office from which we, the five Colombian research visitors four years ago profited a lot.

Kind Regards,

Jorge E. Benvides - Universidad de Nariño

Have you tried Keynote Advanced? It's based on TED talks and features many examples of 'non-native speakers': http://bre.eltkeynote.com/

For non-coursebook materials, I'd also recommend IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive) and ELLLO (English Listening Lesson Library) websites.

Dear Marek, thank you for your entry. I'll have a look at the resources you've suggested. Best.

Mark Hancock's fantastic 'Authentic Listening' features both L1 regional and L2 speakers. I and my colleagues adore it. Highly recommended!

Also Robin Walker's Teaching the Pronunciation of English as a Lingua Franca has a great collection of voices too.

Dear Gemma, thank you for your suggestions. I'll try to find them.

Best.