Testing the comprehensibility of Simplified English: an analysis of airplane procedure documents

The experiment reported was conducted to determine whether procedures written in Simplified English (SE) would be more effective than their non-SE counterparts. This study examined the effect of document type (SE versus non-SE), passage (Document A versus Document B), and native language (native versus non-native English speakers) on the comprehensibility, identification of content location, and task completion time of procedure documents for airplane maintenance. This research indicates that SE significantly improves the comprehensibility and the identification of content location of more complex documents for both native and non-native speakers.