In the early 21st century, English in the world finds itself in an “unstable equilibrium”: On the one hand, the majority of the world's English users are not native speakers of the language, but use it as an additional language, as a convenient means for communicative interactions that cannot be conducted in their mother tongues. On the other hand, linguistic descriptions have as yet predominantly been focusing on English as it is spoken and written by its native speakers.
VOICE seeks to redress the balance by providing a sizeable, computer-readable corpus of English as it is spoken by this non-native speaking majority of users in different contexts. These speakers use English successfully on a daily basis all over the world, in their personal, professional or academic lives. We therefore see them primarily not as language learners but as language users in their own right. It is therefore clearly worth finding out just how they use the language. This is exactly what VOICE seeks to make possible.
The VOICE project as such ran from 2005 to 2013, see News
Via Shona Whyte
Too many learners still think they have to aim for native speaker models. Too many teachers are not aware that the standard English they teach is not the only acceptable English. These recordings were collected as part of a major research project into International English / English as a Lingua Franca (ELF).