Analyzing Readability of Academic Paper Abstracts for ESL Learners across Various Computer Science Subfields
Yo Ehara · 2022
English is the primary language used in computer science (CS) papers. Students who use English as a second language (ESL) often face the challenge of learning both CS and English simultaneously. This paper sought to explore an underexplored research question: Which subfields of CS are particularly difficult for learners to read as English text? We built a highly accurate automatic readability assessor and applied it to evaluate 38 subcategories of CS subfields based on approximately 460,000 CS abstracts submitted to arXiv. We found that approximately 75% of these abstracts were readable by intermediate-level English learners. In addition, discrete mathematics appears to be the easiest subfield for ESL readers as English text, whereas digital libraries are the most difficult. These results imply that the degree of language support ESL learners need to read abstracts vary widely according to the CS subfield.