The PLanTra project addressed the need for clear financial and business communication. With more and more people reading specialised content in order to make decisions that have a long-lasting impact on their financial wellbeing, the importance of plain language cannot be overestimated. Training current and future writers of financial and business documents in the use of plain language is therefore key to ensure that communications are delivered clearly and effectively to the lay audience.
This fellowship focused on content about corporate social responsibility, namely the extent to which companies invest in the working conditions of their employees, the environment, and society. As more and more customers prefer to buy products from socially responsible companies, information about corporate social responsibility can influence purchase decisions. However, there is empirical evidence that such information is rather difficult to read.
Against this background, we developed plain language training specifically tailored to corporate content on social responsibility, and we tested its impact on: (i) the process by which business students simplify texts; and (ii) the characteristics of their texts. We answered the following research questions:
• Does plain language training have an impact on how business students simplify financial texts?
• Does plain language training have an impact on the resulting comprehensibility of texts?
Our results have led to the following conclusions:
• The writing processes of university students show similarities with those of more experienced writers;
• The majority of second-language university students prefer to rewrite texts from scratch when asked to simplify;
• In the text simplification process, it is possible to identify two macro-level phases — a first phase during which students produce most of the content, and a second phase characterised by reading/editing behaviour;
• The duration, frequency, and location of writing pauses is linked with readability.
• Our plain language training did not influence the way in which second-language university students paused, revised, or looked up sources. However, it helped students with lexical choices and it provided them with stepwise guidance on how to approach the text simplification task.
• Our plain language training led students to produce texts that were shorter and syntactically simpler. However, we found no impact on high-level text characteristics (such as cohesion). This might explain why comprehensibility as assessed by lay readers was not higher.
