‘Leichte Sprache’ is a variety of German that is linguistically and structurally reduced in its complexity. It intends to facilitate reading and thus to make it easier for people with poor reading skills to participate in society. The target groups of Leichte Sprache are very heterogeneous, therefore, it is an open question which target groups benefit from which rules of Leichte Sprache. Concerning the target group of people with German as a foreign language, there are no empirical studies that address this question. In a questionnaire study we investigated whether German learners from an English secondary school benefit from compound separation and the avoidance of personal pronouns. The data show that the learners consider compound separation as helpful. The avoidance of personal pronouns, however, is perceived to negatively impact reading. These results support the assumption that not all rules of Leichte Sprache are helpful for people with German as a foreign language, but that others can facilitate reading. Empirical studies of this kind can help to make it easier for people with German as a foreign language to learn German. Regarding other target groups we propose to empirically investigate their reading-related needs to make reading and thus participation in society easier.
