Text usability for Non-Native Readers of English
Ryuusuke Ueta, Lawrie Hunter, Xiangshi Ren
Department of Information Systems Engineering, Kochi University of Technology
1INTRODUCTION

English (NNREs), PBM is more readable than NEF.

Two new technologies, the personal computer andPBM is impractical for application

to paper media

the world wide web, have had a great impact on reading

because of the extra page cost, but it is easily applicabletechnology. Suddenly there is an electronic alternative

to electronic text, where the cost of extra pages of text

to traditional paper documents. This technologicalis negligible [2].

change is still not fully understood or implemented, but2METHOD

it is clear that text and reading are changing and will

2.1

Subjects

continue to change. The main important qualities ofweb

based

text

arereadability,browsability,

Thirty-four Japanese university students (27 male, 7female), ranging in age from 19 to 20, were subjects insearchability and assistiveness [1]. For the non-native

the experiment.

reader of English, the most important aspect of text isreadability. In electronic text, however, readability is2.2 Design
An experimental tool was run on the Internet

more complex since electronic text is not always linear,

Explorer 5 Macintosh Edition using an applet (Java 1.3).

and the term readability has been overshadowed by theEach subject was tested on reading four different texts,

term usability [2].

two of which were NEF and two PBM. The difficulty

The Wright brothers made their first flight in1903, but they probably never imagined that
one day planes would transport people all overthe world.

Fig. 1 Normal Expression Forms (NEF)
The Wright brothers made their first flightin 1903,
but they probably never imaginedthat one day
planes would transport people
all over the world.

Fig. 2 Phrase Boundary Marking (PBM)of the four texts and number of words wereapproximately the same.
2.3

ProcedureFirst, the purpose and methodology of theexperiment were explained to the subjects. The subjects
were then asked to start up the experiment tool, and to
begin reading the text that appeared in the text box on
the screen. The tool displayed only one line of text ata time. Thus it was possible to record reading time
precisely. The software allowed the reader to move
downwards through the text, but not upward, so theThis study compares the readability of two text

reader could not read the text repeatedly. The reading

formats, Normal Expression Form (NEF) and Phrase

time for each text was recorded automatically as theBoundary Marked (PBM). Readability is an index oftime elapsed between selections of the “beginning to

the ease of reading a text. Readability depends on aread” button to “finished reading” button.

variety of factors, including character size, font, content,

After the subjects read each text, they were asked to

vocabulary difficulty, and sentence length [3]. NEF is

answer a quiz on the content of the text. There werethe format of ordinary text.

five multiple choice questions in each quiz, eachIn this display form thelength of the lines of text is determined by the size ofquestion having four answers to choose from.

the display medium (see figure 1).

PBM, phrase

subjects were also asked to fill in a questionnaire using

boundary marking, is a format in which the end of each

1-to-7 scales. The questions were about the subjects’phrase or grammatical chunk is marked visually inperceptions of reading ease, text difficulty, quiz

some way, for example with a special mark (figure 2).

difficulty, display format related stress, and text related

Our hypothesis is that, for non-native readers ofstress.

TheRESULTS
There appear to be many factors which affect thereadability, and there are many readability evaluation
indices, as previously mentioned. In this study, theindex of readability defined by [4] was used, as definedby formula (1):Readability = Reading speed x Test score (1)Evalution Value

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1NEFReading speed in a formula (1) is computed from aformula (2):Fig.4.

Reading Speed = w / tPBM

Subjective evaluation(2)

Where “w” is the number of words of the text which
the subject read and “t” is reading time. The measured

4 DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
The results showed that PBM text was superior toreadability of the texts used in this experiment, obtained

NEF text in readability, reading time, test score.

by using formula (1), are shown in figure 3.

Moreover, an analysis of subject preferences showed

The main findings of the experiment were as follows.

that the subjects in general preferred PBM text to NEF

The readability of PBM text (mean = 4.88 scores)

text. The equal reading speed of NEF text and BPM

was higher than that of NEF (2.85 scores), F(1,66) =text was thought to be due to the fact that the number of

9.34, p < 0.05.

lines of BPM text was greater than that of NEF.

Regarding reading time, PBM text (mean = 204 ms)

Overall, the results show that PBM is more

took less time to read than NEF (mean = 255 ms),

efficiently readable than NEF.

F(1,66) = 7.42, p< 0.05.

applied not only to web pages but also to other display
media such as tablet PCs and PDAs (personal digital

8

Readability (scores)

This result can be7assistants) which have been attracting considerable

6attention in the market.

5This paper provides a basis for the comparison of

4

NEF and BPM text formats. Many challenges remain

32in future work.

1

one-line displays and one-sentence displays. Further0NEF

PBM

Further research is required with bothconsideration could also be given to various kinds ofsentences, e.g., long and short sentences, complex

Fig.3.

Readability (with standard deviation

error bars).

sentences.
REFERENCES[1] Morgan, E. (1998) Becoming a world wide web

As for reading comprehension, test scores for PBM

server expert. Chicago: University of Illinois at

text (mean =3.25 scores) were higher than those forChicago. Workshop presentation 17 March 1998.

NEF text (mean = 2 scores), F (1,66) = 22.01, p < 0.05.

http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~emorgan/waves/

However, there was no significant difference in[2] Nielsen, J. (1999) Designing web usability. New

reading speed between NEF and PBM, as calculatedusing the formula (2).
Figure 4 shows the results of the subjects’ subjective
evaluation. These ratings were based on the averageRiders Publishing.
[3] Hunter, L. (1998), Text Nouveau: Visible Structure
in Text Presentation, Computer Assisted Language
Learning, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp.363-379.

value of the subjects’ scores on the 5 questions.

[4] Flesch, R., How To Write Plain English,

Significant difference in main effects was found

http://www.mang.canterbury.ac.nz/courseinfo/Acadbetween NEF and BPM, F (1,66) = 4.40, p< 0.05.

emicWriting/Flesch.htm