The Effects of Native Language on Requirements Quality: A Case Study

Sammanfattning: [Context and motivation] Software engineering is an incredibly diverse field with respect to the nationalities and languages of the people who work and study within it. Companies are increasingly using English as their business language and with students being globally mobile where possible, more are choosing to continue their higher education in English. [Question/problem] This study aims to find out whether native language has an effect on the quality of natural language requirements in order to find areas for improvement within software engineering education and industry training. [Principal ideas/results] After analysing demographic responses and samples of requirements received from case study participants, the results indicated that native language may have an effect on requirements quality. Furthermore, different languages affect the quality of requirements in different ways. The highest level of education achieved and total number of languages spoken by case study participants were also identified as having an influence on the quality of requirements. [Contribution] Researchers and educators could use the findings in this paper to adjust educational materials to cater towards the language groups discussed to improve or prevent requirements issues. The suggestions of further work could also be carried out to add more knowledge to this area of requirements engineering.