The current project investigated the extent to which several lexical aspects of second language (L2) speech—appropriateness, fluency, variation, sophistication, abstractness, sense relations— interact to influence native speakers’ judgements of comprehensibility (ease of understanding) and accentedness (linguistic nativelikeness). Extemporaneous speech elicited from 40 French speakers of Englis...

Foreign-accented speech has most commonly been characterized across three related, but independent dimensions: intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accent [6]. The present study applied an auditory free classification task, which has been used to test listeners’ perceptual representations of regional dialects [5] and different languages [3], to further investigate the salient perceptual dime...

This paper presents the problem of program comprehension and its relationship with programming style. It defines programming style as those characteristics of source code associated with formatting and commenting (i.e. typographical style [1]). The paper also outlines a position whose ultimate aim is to support the software evolution process through maintaining comprehensibility. This aim could...

The current study set out to examine the role of learner motivation in second language (L2) speech learning in English-as-a-Foreign-Language classrooms. The motivational orientations of 40 first-year university Japanese students were surveyed via a tailored questionnaire and linked to their spontaneous speech development, elicited via a timed picture description task at the onset and end of one...

Context: Over the years, several modeling languages for requirements have been proposed. These languages employ different conceptual approaches, including scenario-based and goal-oriented ones. Empirical studies providing evidence about requirements model comprehensibility are rare, especially when addressing languages that belong to different modeling approaches. Objective: This work aims to c...

Abstract: Using optimization tools such as genetic algorithms to construct a fuzzy expert system (FES) focusing only on its accuracy without considering comprehensibility may result in a system that is not easy to understand or so called a black box model. To exploit the transparency features of FESs for explanation in higher-level knowledge representation, a FES should provide high comprehensi...

Abstract: Using optimization tools such as genetic algorithms (GAs) to construct a fuzzy expert system (FES) focusing only on its accuracy without considering the comprehensibility may result in a system that is not easy to understand. To exploit the transparency features of FESs for explanation in higher-level knowledge representation, a FES should provide high comprehensibility while preserve...

Common techniques for improving comprehensibility of software systems include concerns modularization and code structuring by applying well-established design patterns. However, non-trivial software systems will unavoidably exhibit concerns whose implementation cannot be mapped onto a single programming module, but will cut across the system’s structure. These crosscutting concerns lead to impl...