Effects of Bimodal Subtitling of English Movies on Content Comprehension and Vocabulary Recognition

This thesis is an attempt to study the impact of bimodal subtitling on content comprehension of English movies and vocabulary recognition. Forty four senior undergraduate students studying at Shiraz Islamic Azad University were selected from two intact classes of Tapes and Films Translation course. Two BBC documentary movies (Dangerous knowledge and Where’s my robot?), one with English subtitles and the other without subtitles were selected based on the content and level of difficulty of the language. First, both classes watched the same movies, but class 1 first watched ‘Dangerous knowledge’ with English subtitling and then ‘Where’s my robot?’ without subtitling. To counteract the order effect class 2 first watched ‘where’s my robot?’ and then ‘Dangerous knowledge’. After viewing the movies, the participants answered the relevant multiple choice vocabulary and content comprehension questions. The data gathered were subjected to the statistical procedure of paired samples t-test. The results clearly indicated that bimodal subtitling had a positive impact on content comprehension of English movies. It can be said that the participants comprehend the subtitled movie better than the one without subtitle. However, for some reasons bimodal subtitling did not have an effect on participants’ vocabulary recognition.


Introduction
English movies are available in many countries around the world and are a popular form of entertainment with many students learning English as a foreign language (EFL).Using films to teach a foreign language can help motivate students and remove some of the anxiefy of not knowing the language.However, they are not just entertainment; they are also a valuable language teaching tool.The use of movies as a teaching tool is not new in the field of foreign language teaching and leaming.Movies not only allow the teacher to introduce variefy and realify into the classroom, but discussions based on movie content allow students to bring their own background knowledge and experiences into the discussion.Furthermore, almost everyone finds watching films pleasurable and enjoys talking about them.From a motivational perspective, it seems that movies are a perfect choice for use in a language leaming classroom.However, the burden is on the teacher to fmd ways to make movies an educationally valuable tool for instmction.This medium provides not only rich aural input, but also, the use of subtitles can expose leamers to visual input as well.It is the latter type of input which this study will address.As Kusumarasdyati (2005) states, teachers play such movies without subtitles and ask leamers to view them while attempting to comprehend the conversations spoken in the target language.However, it is also possible to present movies with subtitles in the native language.With advances in technology, options of how one can watch movies become numerous.Not only can the sound and images be adopted, but the subtities of various languages are also called for assisting comprehension and language learning.Subtitles in any language are wonderful tools that let people enjoy films from other cultures and countries, but for language leamers subtitles might offer a new path to language comprehension.The National Center for Technology Innovative and Center for Implementing Technology in Education (2010) asserts that for students who are leaming English (or another language), subtitled movies can have benefits.The use of subtitled rnovies has been proved to be more effective at improving overall listetiing comprehension than non-subtitled niovies.
Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education !23.9 Students who watch subtitled movies to leam a foreign language have shown improvement in reading and listening comprehension, word recognition, decoding skills, motivation and vocabulary acquisition.
The reading of subtitles must be separated from the "normal" reading of words and sentences printed on a page.Seeing subtitles is perhaps closer to the act of listening than that of reading.The words are shown once, then gone away.The viewer has no chance to go back and refer to an earlier part in the text.Not only do sttidents need to rely on their abilify to take in printed material, but also they need to do it very quickly.The addition of subtitled movies to classroom instmction has a further benefit of shifting watching typical classroom movies from a picture-viewing activify to a reading activify, supplying stmggling readers with additional reading practice.(National Center for Technology Innovation & Center for Implementing Technology in Education, 2010, para.10).
The National Center for Technology Innovative and Center for Implementing Technology in Education ( 2010) asserts that research has shown that watching movie appears to have a positive impact on comprehension skills, and combining viewing with text, i.e. subtitles, appears to boost vocabulary acquisition.Though most students do well with subtitled movies, the speed of subtitles could pose a problem for very young children or stmggling readers.For particularly low-level readers, teachers should consider using subtitled movies where vocabulary is less likely to be difficult."These programs may include those where the main characters are children or teenagers, animated movies, family programs, or movies with young children in the cast."(para.7).
In the EFL classroom, the use of foreign language subtitles projected on the screen during viewings of English-spoken movies is common.However, DVD technology now provides the powerful function of selecting various subtitles that can facilitate the listening comprehension of leamers with different levels of proficiency and enhance their motivation toward leaming the target language.Katchen, Lin, Fox and Chun (2002) characterize six combinations of subtitles as presented in the following sections: 1) Standard Subtitling (L2 audio with Ll subtitles) 2) Bimodal Subtitling (L2 audio with L2 subtitles) 3) Reversed Subtitling (Ll audio with L2 subtitles) 4) Bilingual Subtitling (L2 audio with L2 and Ll subtitles simultaneously) 5) Bilingual Reversed Subtitling (Ll audio with Ll and L2 subtitles simultaneously) 6) No Subtitling (L2 audio with no subtitles at all)

I.I Objectives and Significance of the Study
The present study intends to investigate the effect of bimodal subtitling on content comprehension of English movies and vocabulary recognition of Iranian EFL sttidents.It aims at fmding answers to the following research questions: 1) Does bimodal subtitling have any effect on content comprehension of English movies?
2) Does bimodal subtitling have any effect on L2 vocabulary recognition?
As King (2002) states "films provide more pedagogical options and are a rich resource of intrinsically motivating materials for leamers."(para.1).When leamers are exposed to films, they can leam some words and phrases used in the films and ultimately improve their target language.Various types of films, such as fiction, science-fiction, romance, horror and historical movies, catch individuals' interests and arouse leamers' motivation.Watching films is among leamers' favorite activities.As leamers who lack interest in leaming a foreign language often fail to make progress, films of various types that arouse different individual's interests can be adopted as language leaming materials.However, the way one watches movies has a particular effect on one's leaming.One way is watching movies with subtitles either in Ll or L2.
By using L2 subtitled movies, students can leam how to pronounce many words.Moreover, subtitles can reinforce the understanding of English context-bound expressions and help leamers acquire new vocabulary and idioms.Furthermore, subtitles can motivate leamers to study English outside the classroom context by watching English movies, listening to the original dialogues.Finally it allows leamers to follow the plot easily; in other words, to enhance comprehension.Some researchers compared the presence and absence of subtitles.One study revealed that the leamers interacted more frequently when the subtitles were provided in the listening class (Grgurovic & Hegelheimer, 2007).Few empirical studies have been conducted to test the effectiveness of bimodal subtitling on content comprehension of movies in Iran.However, the case of vocabulary is different; there are a number of studies that investigated the effectiveness of subtitles on vocabulary recognition.TTierefore, this study could have significant implication for both teachers and students.

The effect of subtitles on language leaming
Various studies have investigated the different aspects of the effect of subtitling on second/foreign language leaming.Zanon (2006) investigated the contribution of computer-based subtitling to language learning and concluded that subtitling could motivate leamers to appreciate the huge amoimt of content of the film that does not reach the audience when it is presented to them dubbed.In the same vein, Kusumarasdyati (2005) studied the effect of subtitled movie DVDs and found them an effective teaching device to develop the EFL leamers' listening skills.
Borras & Lafayette (1994) incorporated subtitles into short video segments that were integrated-into an interactive multimedia course.The participants were able to see and control a video segment with or without same language subtitles.Results indicated that having the opportunify to see and control subtitles positively influences both comprehension and production of language.
Grgurovic & Hegelheimer ( 2007) used a multimedia listening activify containing a video of an academic lecture to compare the effect of second language subtitles and lecture transcripts on the comprehension of the lecture.It tumed out that students preferred subtitles and used them more than the transcript.
To study the effect of subtitles on film understanding, Grignon, Lavaur, & Blanc (2005) compared three ¡versions of a film sequence (that is, dubbed, subtitled, and original versions).They found that the dubbed and subtitled versions lead to better performance than the original version.

Effect of subtitles on vocabulary learning
A number of studies have more specifically focused on the effect of subtitles on vocabulary leaming.Bird and Williams (2002) conducted two studies examining the effect of single modalify (sound or text) and jbimodal (sound and text) presentation on word leaming.Both experiments led to the conclusion that subtitling can improve the leaming of novel words.| In a study, Koolstra and Beentjes (1999) investigated whether children in two primary school grades in the Netherlands would leam English vocabulary through watching a television program with an English soundtrack and Dutch subtitles.They concluded that vocabulary acquisition was highest in the subtitled condition.Two hundred and forty-six Dutch children in Grades 4 and 6 (aged 9+ and 11+) watched a 15-minute documentary having been assigned to one of three experimental conditions: (i) program about grizzly bears with an| English soundtrack and Dutch subtitles, (ii) the same program with an English soundtrack but without subtitles,¡and (iii) a Dutch language television program about prairie dogs (a control condition to establish a baseline off English vocabulary knowledge).These grades were chosen as English classes start in Grade 5, so in Grade 4, they would have had no formal English lessons, while in Grade 6, they would have already had English on a regular basis.
Vocabulary scores for those watching with subtitles were higher than for those watching without subtitles and scores in this latter group were higher than those in the control group.Grade 6 children performed better than those in Grade 4.More words were recognized after watching the subtitled documentary than the non-subtitled version, and, again.Grade 6 children outperformed Grade 4. Children with a high frequency of watching subtitled programs at home had significantly higher English vocabulary scores than children with a low frequency and medium frequency of watching subtitled programs.The findings confirm the many anecdotal accounts that children can acquire elements of a foreign language through watching subtitled television programs.
Vocabulary acquisition was also fotmd in children who watched the condition without Dutch subtitles.The findings provided further evidence that the subtitles do not distract from hearing the words.
Stewart & Pertusa (2004) explored gains in vocabulary recognition made by intermediate students viewing films in Spanish with English subtitles and others watching the same films with Spanish subtitles.They reported that intralingual subtitles are more effective in enhancing vocabulary recognition.I Markham (1999) also examined the effect of subtitles on aural word recognition skills and found that the availabilify of subtitles significantly improved the participants' abilify to identify the key words when they subsequently heard them again (p: 323-4).\

Effect of subtitles on movie comprehension
Hinkin, Michael (2009) Performed Two studies to investigate the effects of subtitled movies on the comprehension of movie content.Both investigations involved the presentation of 10-minute movie clips from A Few Good Men and See No Evil, Hear No Evil.Participants completed three types of multiple-choice recognition questions for each movie, including: pictorial-only questions, verbal-only questions and combined-information questions.Experiment 1 was designed to investigate the difference between levels of comprehension, when verbal information was presented only in the participjints' native language (i.e.English soundtrack and/or subtitles).Results of Experiment 1 indicate that participants performed significantly better on verbal-only and combined-information questions when their native language was present in the subtitles as opposed to the soundtrack.These findings confirm previous fmdings that reading verbal information in subtitles is more efficient than listening to the soundtrack.Comparison of performance on the pictorial-only questions across presentation formats in Experiment 1 showed participants in the English soundtrack with no subtitles condition performed significantly better than all other conditions.Although Experiment 1 provides a basic understanding of how native language soundtracks and subtitles influence comprehension of movies, subtitled media are primarily used when viewing a movie with verbal information from a foreign language.Experiment 2 built on the results of Experiment 1 by incorporating an unfamiliar language (i.e.French).The question sets used in Experiment 1 were also used in Experiment 2; however, two French vocabulary tests were also used in Experiment 2 to measure incidental foreign language acquisition.Consistent with the results of Experiment 1, participants performed significantly better on verbal-only and combined-information questions when their native language was in the subtitles.This finding extended the conclusion that native language verbal information presented visually (i.e.subtitles) yields better performance on questions requiring verbal cues than native language verbal information presented orally (i.e.soundtrack) to foreign language material.Comparison of performance on the pictorial-only questions across presentation formats in Experiment 2 showed no significant differences.Comparison across the two experiments reflected a distraction effect associated with the presence of a foreign language.Performance on the French vocabulary tests was very poor across all conditions and yielded no significant differences, suggesting that the tasks may have been too difficult.
In a study, published in the open-access joumal PLoS One, Mitterer and McQueen (2009) investigated whether subtitles, which provide lexical information, support perceptual leaming about foreign speech.Dutch participants, unfamiliar with Scottish and Australian regional accents of English, watched Scottish or Australian English movies with Dutch, English or no subtitles, and then repeated audio fragments of both accents.Repetition of novel fragments was worse after viewing movies with Dutch-subtitle but better after watching movies with English-subtitle.Native-language subtitles appear to create lexical interference, but foreign-language subtitles assist speech leaming by indicating which words (and sound) are being spoken.
A study by Hayati and Mohmedi (2009) represented a preliminary effort to empirically examine the efficacy of subtitled movie on listening comprehension of intermediate English as Foreign Language students.To achieve this purpose, out of a total of 200 intermediate students, 90 were picked based on a proficiency test.The material consisted of six episodes (approximately 5 minutes each) of a DVD entitled Wild Weather.The students viewed only one of the three treatment conditions: English subtitles, Persian subtitles, no subtitles.After each viewing session, six sets of multiple-choice tests were administered to examine listening comprehension rates.The results revealed that the English subtitles group performed at a considerably higher level than the Persian subtitles group, which in tum performed at a substantially higher level than the no subtitle group on the listening test.
To summarize, most of the studies mentioned so far, seem to confirm that subtitles can improve language leaming, vocabulary acquisition and content comprehension.

Participants
This study involved 44 undergraduate students aged between 20-27 selected from senior students in the autumn semester of 2010.They were both male and female and were English Translation majors from two intact classes of Tapes and Films Translation course at Shiraz Islamic Azad Universify.Common to all of the participants was at least six years of exposure to EFL instmction during which they had leamed English.With regard to nationalify and language background no difference existed among the participants; all were Iranians and their mother tongue was Persian.Furthermore, none of the participants had lived in any English speaking country.

Materials
Two BBC documentary movies, one with English subtitles and the other without subtitles, were selected for this investigation.The one with subtitles was 'Dangerous Knowledge', about a mathematics professor, Georg Cantor, who started a revolution he never really meant to start.It eventually threatened to shake the whole of mathematics and science on its foundations.He started this revolution by asking himself a simple question: 'How big is infinity?'.This movie took about thirfy minutes to play.The other movie without subtitling was called ' Where's my robot?', which introduced different kinds of robots.The duration of this film was twenfy minutes.
The movies were selected based on the content to be interesting, the level of difficulfy of the langua.geto be appropriate for the participants and the duration of the fihns to be less than thirfy minutes.j

Instruments -
Two different tests were used for each movie to collect the data.A set of ten multiple choice comprehension questions and another ten multiple choice vocabulary questions were developed by the researcher for each movie.These are four-choice questions and were extracted from the movies (Appendices A & B).For the comprehension questions, first the researcher had to watch the whole movies to realize the theme and the subject.Then, she watched them carefully part by part to pose the comprehension four-choice questions.The advanced vocabulary was chosen from the movies for the vocabulary questions.Some of the sentences for the related vocabulary were extracted from Cambridge and Oxford Advanced Leamers' Dictionary.To estiinate the reliabilify of the tests, SPSS was used.The reliabilify for the comprehension and vocabulary items (subtitle and without) was calculated as .756which is acceptable for a test of this kind.

Data Collection
The participants were informed about the research project before the administration so as to stir motivation and interest.First, both classes watched the same movies, but group 1 first watched 'Dangerous knowledge' with English subtitling and then 'where's my robot?' without subtitling.To counteract the order effect the second group first watched 'where's my robot?' without subtitling, then 'Dangerous knowledge' with English subtitling.The movies were presented in one session.Then, after watching the movies, the participants of both classes received tests of vocabulary and content comprehension.After the first movie was played, students receiyed a set of twenfy multiple choice comprehension and vocabulary questions related to the movie, they had 15 mmutes to answer the questions.Then, the second movie was played and following it the related questions were answered in 15 minutes.

Scoring and Data analysis
Data in this study consisted of the answers to the multiple choice comprehension and vocabulary recognition questions.The participants received one point for each item answered correctly.The data gathered were subjected to the statistical procedures of SPSS.First the scores were computed.Each participant had two scores, one for the movie with subtitle, and the other for the one without subtitle.Then, these two scores were categorized into four groups, including comprehension / vocabulary, and subtitle / without subtitle.In order to compare each participant's grade in one subcategory to their grade in another subcategory paired samples t-test was run to calculate the significance of the difference between the means of the two sets of scores.The four categories were total scores, comprehension with subtitle scores and comprehension without subtitle scores, vocabulary with subtitle scores and vocabulary witbout subtitle scores.In the following chapter the results of the analysis will be presented and discussed.

Design of the Study
The design of this research is one-shot case study; since, there was only one group without control one and also no pretest was run.

Results
To understand the participants' performance on the experimental task of the study, the statistical program of SPSS was used.Paired samples t-test was run to calculate the significance of the difference between the means of two sets of scores among three categories as presented below: ' Subtitle and vidthout subtitle scores, comprehension with subtitle scores and comprehension without subtitle scores, vocabulary with subtitle scores and vocabulary without subtitle scores.

Discussion
Referring to Table 1 the main effect obtained is that the participants performed better when the movie was played with bimodal subtitling.This includes total vocabulary and comprehension questions.The second row of this table deals with comprehension questions; in this row the results are better than the total.It can be said that the participants did actually perform better on comprehending the English movie with subtitle than! the one without subtitle.However, there isn't any significant difference between watching a movie with subtitle and without for understanding the vocabulary of the movies.Therefore, our participants were more successful in comprehending the English movie with bimodal subtitling than without subtitiing, since the written forms of the dialogues were presented to them.However, in the case of vocabulary viewing movie with subtitle had no particular effect, due to the fact that leaming vocabulary from subtitled movies may need watching the film more than once.

Conclusion
This research on watching English movies with bimodal subtitling has shown that films are not only a means of motivation to entertain students, but also they could assist leamers to comprehend the language as spoken in various accents.That is, EFL leamers in general are exposed to the authentic language uttered by people with different accents in various parts of the United States and United Kingdom.Therefore, it is hard for leamers to hear every single word, because they are used to the Standard English.Furthermore, this is a useful practice to get acquainted with different accents of English around the world, and bimodal subtitling is a perfect choice to assist the comprehension of the movies.
However, in this research bimodal subtitling had no effect on L2 vocabulary recognition, due to the fact that expose to the film once had probably no effect on vocabulary leaming.Since, as Koolstra and Beentjes (1999) claimed, for leaming vocabulary from subtitled movies students have to watch them with high frequency.It can be assumed that subtitled movies could have an effect on vocabulary recognition if leamers watch the movie more than once.Viewing the movie twice or more may help students recognize vocabulary and they may leam new expressions and idioms.(2004).Gains to language leamers from viewing target language closed-captioned fihns.Fore/g/jLangMage^nnafa, 57(3),438-447.http://dx.doi.Org/10.llll/j.1944-9720.2004.tb0270I.x Zanon, N. T. (2006).Using subtitles to enhance foreign language learning.Poria Linguarum 6. .017 .000 .098 According to Table 1 the value of í for total vocabulary and comprehension questions was statistically significant (i = 2.475 p< .017).It means that there is a significant difference between the two means.In other words participants answered the subtitled movie questions better than the questions of the movie without subtitle.
Based on this table the value of t for comprehension was more statistically significant than total (t = 4.650 p< .000).These results showed that participants comprehended the subtitled movie better than the one without subtitle.However, there isn't any significant difference between the two means for vocabulary.
[Online] Available: http://www.ugr.es/~portalin/articulos/PLnumero6/talavan.pdf(September 29started the revolution by asking the question I a) What is hifmify?c) Is there any infinify?¡ b) How big is infmify?d) How can infinify be proved?' 3. What is Cantor's last major publication about?did Cantor find after his first publication?[ a) Infinify is a vague number without end.| b) He could not prove continuum hypothesis.c) Set theory is not tme.d) He could add and subtract infmify. 5.When was the happiest and most inspired period of Cantor's life?When a) his theory came into publication.] b) he discovered there was a vast mathematics of the infinite.c) he came to the Alps to meet a mathematician.d) he proved the continutim hypothesis.6.Where did Cantor spend his entire professional life?a) In the asylum c) In the lecture theater in the universify b) In the Alps d) In his hometown, Hallie 7. What was Cantor's dream?a) To prove continutim hypothesis , b) To receive an invitation to one of the great universities c) To publish his work d) To meet his fiiend in the Alps 8. What did his one time friend and teacher, Kronecker, say about Cantor?He said he was a) acormpterofyouth c) the father of mathematics b) a math sicker d) a great scientist 9. What is the most precious possession of Cantor's?a) His publication c) His continuimi hypothesis b) His father's letter d) His set theory 10.Which statement is not tme about Cantor?a) He proved the continuum hypothesis.b) He worked on the continuum hypothesis for the rest of his life.c) He had the musical talent.d) He never fully recovered.PartB: Vocabulary 1.Most of the people are in the of happiness in their lives; some will reach it but others won't.questioned by the police, the suspect, who had actually committed the crime, gave his questioners showed obvious hostility towards their new neighbors.of the students living in the dormitory in Iran have many adversities, which they have to overcome.'ve got a long way to go before we unravel the secrets of genetics.didn't Andrew tell Darmy that Stair could talk?Becausehe a) thought Danny might know it c) forgot to do so b) thought it was something ordinary d) wanted to surprise him 4. Why did Darmy come to Japan? were lots of robots there b) many Japanese worked on robots ¡ c) Japanese were famous for making complex robots d) highly intelligent scientists were in Japan 5. Why did Danny show us a little Samurai robot on the train?To indicate that a) a robot could walk I b) a robot could be small !c) a robot could do what you wanted it to do d) Japanese have made humanoid robots for many years 6.Why is HRP3 unique in walking robots?Because • a) It can tum around b) It doesn't need to be pre-programmed c) It can both talk and walk d) If it falls down, it can get up by itself 7.Where is HRP3 supposed to work? a) In the office c) In constmction b) In surgery d) In the laboratory 8. Which statement is NOT tme about HRP3? a) It is very expensive.; b) It can tackle a large bump.j c) It is a robust manual worker.!d) It is a super robot., 9. Why does Domo need a vision system?i a) To recognize human faces b) To detect color objects c) To make sense of the world d) To walk through rough surfaces ' 10.According to Danny, what is a cmcial skill for robots if they are to do our bidding?abruptly when one of the delegates walked out in protest.a) unexceptionally b) unfoundedly c) unexpectedly d) unfairly .That's weird.I thought I'd left my keys on the table but they're not there.a) funny b) interesting c) odd d) annoying i This glass has been used, please me a clean one.