title: "Non-Native English Speakers Learning Computer Programming: Barriers, Desires, and Design Opportunities"
authors: Philip J. Guo
venue: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI)
year: 2018
links:
- <a href="non-native-english-speakers-learning-programming-paper.htm">Blog post</a>

tweet: Non-native English speakers face problems reading, writing, and talking about English-centric code

abstract: >
  People from nearly every country are now learning computer
  programming, yet the majority of programming languages, libraries,
  documentation, and instructional materials are in English. What
  barriers do non-native English speakers face when learning from
  English-based resources? What desires do they have for improving
  instructional materials? We investigate these questions by deploying a
  survey to a programming education website and analyzing 840 responses
  spanning 86 countries and 74 native languages. We found that
  non-native English speakers faced barriers with reading instructional
  materials, technical communication, reading and writing code, and
  simultaneously learning English and programming. They wanted
  instructional materials to use simplified English without
  culturally-specific slang, to use more visuals and multimedia, to use
  more culturally-agnostic code examples, and to embed inline
  dictionaries. Programming also motivated some to learn English better
  and helped clarify logical thinking about natural languages. Based on
  these findings, we recommend learner-centered design improvements to
  programming-related instructional resources and tools to make them
  more accessible to people around the world.

bibtex: >
  @inproceedings{GuoCHI2018,
   author = {Guo, Philip J.},
   title = {Non-Native English Speakers Learning Computer Programming: Barriers, Desires, and Design Opportunities},
   booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
   series = {CHI '18},
   year = {2018},
   isbn = {978-1-4503-5620-6},
   location = {Montreal QC, Canada},
   pages = {396:1--396:14},
   articleno = {396},
   numpages = {14},
   url = {http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3173574.3173970},
   doi = {10.1145/3173574.3173970},
   acmid = {3173970},
   publisher = {ACM},
   address = {New York, NY, USA},
   keywords = {learning programming, non-native english speakers},
  }