TASK 2: ARTICLE REVIEW

TITLE: The Effects of Captioning Videos Used for Foreign Language Listening Activities.

JOURNAL: Language Learning & Technology, A Refereed Journal for Second and Foreign Language Educators,

Volume 14, Number 1.

AUTHORS:

Paula Winke is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Languages at Michigan State University, where she teaches language testing and language teaching methods in the MA TESOL and Second Language Studies Programs. Her research interests concern the assessment of L2 learners, individual differences, and teaching methods.

Susan Gass is University Distinguished Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Languages at Michigan State University. She has published widely in the field of second language acquisition and has served as President of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and of the International Association of Applied Linguistics.

Tetyana Sydorenko is a Ph.D. candidate in the Second Language Studies Program at Michigan State University. Her research interests include computer-assisted language instruction and testing, second language curriculum and materials development, and second language acquisition. She has published book chapters on computer-assisted language learning and testing.

LINK: http://llt.msu.edu/vol14num1/winkegasssydorenko.pdf

The Effects of Captioning Videos Used for Foreign Language Listening Activities

With the rapid development of technology nowadays, lots of information being shared online. All we have to do is just type what we want to know about. Be it sports, entertainment, politics, education, just name it. And in a split second, you’ll get it, in most cases. A list of all related information will appear right before your eyes. In education alone, myriads of enhancement for pedagogical tools have emerged to help learners learn better. For instance, I’ve came across this research entitled ‘The Effects of Captioning Videos Used for Foreign Language Listening Activities’. As the title suggests, the purpose of this study is to investigate L2 learners’ use of captions while watching videos in a foreign language. This is because there is accessibility of authentic videos which is very useful indeed for foreign language learning. The instructors for foreign languages just have to provide captions for these videos which are from DVD, YouTube or other sources. For your information, caption in this research refers to “on-screen text in a given language (target language) combined with a soundtrack in the same language” and it is not to be confused with subtitle which referred as “on-screen text in the native language of the viewers that accompany the second language soundtrack of the video material” (Markham and Peter, 2003). In specific, the researchers of this study are trying to find the answers of their research questions about the overall effect of captioning, the effect of the order of caption presentation, the differential benefits derived from the ordering effect of captioning depending on the target language and also whether the proficiency differences affect any benefits related to the ordering effects of captions. This study is an experimental research because the researchers were able to test the hypotheses in order to establish cause-and-effects relationship regarding the use of captions in this study. There are one hundred and fifty students (subjects) who participated in this study. All of them are from a large Midwestern university in the U.S. (specific university name is not mentioned) who have taken different foreign language. They were second- or fourth-year learners of Spanish (N = 67) and Russian (N = 41) and second-year learners of Arabic (N = 29) and Chinese (N = 13). The participant pool is not balanced across languages because the researchers relied on volunteers. Meanwhile the instruments used in this study are videos, vocabulary tests, test of prior knowledge of key vocabulary and lastly the comprehension test. The study took place in computer lab. The procedure of data collection is first, the participants filled out a background questionnaire. Then, they watched a series of three videos with each video was shown three times, once with captioning and once without. For each target language, one group saw captions during the first viewing of the video and another saw captions during the second viewing. The Spanish cohort included two extra groups, one which saw the videos twice without captions and one which saw them twice with captions. After the second viewing of each video, participants took the comprehension test and two vocabulary tests. After the video and testing sessions, 26 learners (12 who saw the captioned videos first, 11 who saw them second, and 3 who saw them both times) volunteered to participate in a stimulated recall protocol. This was followed by an oral interview, in which general questions were asked relating to the usefulness of captions for further understanding our research questions. The participants’ responses were audiotaped and transcribed. As mentioned above, these data were intended to further clarify the quantitative results. The goal was to learn how learners dealt with captions in the input and how they perceived issues of ordering effects. To analyze the data, they used the independent t-tests and two-way ANOVA (ANalysis Of VAriance) to compared group means. For the t-tests, Levene’s test for equality of variances was used while two-way ANOVA was conducted only for Spanish and Russian learners to investigate the last research question regarding proficiency (second- or fourth-year learners) differences issue. The findings of the study are in response to the first research question that captioned rather than noncaptioned videos aid novel vocabulary recognition. Captioned videos also aid overall comprehension of the videos. In other words, the use of different modalities (video, sound and text) appears to facilitate vocabulary recognition and overall comprehension. This is supported by previous research, Bird and Williams (2002), who found that a bimodal presentation (in their case, text and sound) resulted in better recognition memory. For the second research question, which is about the effect of the order of caption presentation, they found out that learners presented with captions in the first viewing are better able to aurally recognize novel vocabulary than learners presented with captions in the second viewing. This is supported by comments from the participants during the interview after the tests. They indicated that the captions served the function of drawing learners’ attention to the language, help isolate what the learners perceived to be important and helped them determine what to pay attention to in subsequent viewings. While for the third research question, about the differential benefits derived from the ordering effect of captioning depending on the target language, it is concerned about the orthographic differences between participants’ native and the target language. Winke, Gass and Sydorenko suggest that learners of a language whose orthography is closer to that of the target language are better able to use the written modality as an initial source of information. Thus, Russian and Spanish learners benefitted when the first exposure to the language included the written mode. On the other hand, when there is a great distance between the native and target language orthographies (Chinese & Arabic), the aural modality is preferable, that is, it is more difficult to avail oneself of the written modality and there is a reliance on listening because the written symbols are not well learned. And finally, for research question four, regarding proficiency differences affect any benefits related to the ordering effects of captions, they did not find that proficiency differences affect any benefits derived from captions ordering. Instead, they suggest that captioning, as a language learning tool to aid processing, may function similarly for all proficiency levels. They also mentioned that captions are beneficial for a range of proficiency levels, as long as the videos are matched appropriately in terms of content and complexity (not too hard and not too easy) to the proficiency level of the language learners. Besides the findings from the tests, they did an interview as mentioned earlier. There are five findings from the interview, with three findings matched with the research question however there another two more new additional findings emerged from the comments of participants. Firstly, they found that captions aided in the process of language analysis or decomposition. They believe that captions help learners see and be able to then separate structural patterns or chunks in the videos, which may assist them in remembering and learning from the patterns presented. And secondly, they said, captions can be a crutch. The “crutch” notion here is a positive one in that when learners do not have to focus on extracting meaning from the sounds they hear, they can focus on the form and link that form to meaning. Besides, they found that listening twice to a video, first with captions and then without, may reduce listener anxiety, activate selective and global listening strategies, and promote automaticity in processing.

Personally, I am very interested with this research even when I first saw the title. This is because it is the study about foreign language which I have experienced it before when I learned my third language, Korean. So, I can relate with this article more or less. I absolutely agree with the current and previous studies that various modalities facilitate vocabulary and comprehension. Based on my experience back then, I do not have the chance to learn with various modalities due to the lack of technology enhancement. I recalled that I only learned through aural that is from radio. However, with the schemata that I have about Korean, I found that it is more interesting when I watched any video to learn Korean or other language which are available on the web by myself, especially the one that are enhanced with captions. Even when I was no longer attending the class, I still can gain some novel vocabularies and also learn the structure of the language, just by watching the caption-enhanced videos. I usually got this chance when I watched Korean movies or dramas. This is because nowadays we can download the movies or dramas and get the captions (subtitles in various languages) uploaded by generous internet users. All we have to do is turn on the captions (choose subtitles in Korean). As for me, when I found certain sentences spoken by the actors unfamiliar but interesting, I will pause and play the video as much as I like until I am satisfied with what I just found out. With this, I am not only able to learn new language structure, but also can learn the right pronunciation with native-like intonation. There are times when I do not understand some words. But with the visual and aural help, I manage to grasp what the situation is all about. Even though the knowledge that I gained is limited but it is very satisfying. Therefore, from my own experience, I would say that I am strongly agreed that multiple modalities indeed aid in comprehension and novel vocabulary recognition. In my opinion, the research is very well-conducted. The researchers know very well what they wanted to get from this study from the presentation of their research questions. They also referred to previous researches so that they know what to expect. Plus, the findings of this study has yielded a number of observations about the use of captions, confirming previous research that indicates that captions are beneficial for a greater depth of processing by focusing attention, reinforce the acquisition of vocabulary through modalities and allow learners to determine meaning by decomposing the language chunks. Other than that, this study also provides several useful recommendations for future research in order to expand, update, and enhanced this topic. There is implication of the study in the teaching and learning of ESL. For example, when we watched an English film in class, we were provided with captions (English). I would say that captions are very useful because the audiovisual materials enhanced with captions are powerful pedagogical tools that are believed to help improve L2 listening and reading comprehension skills (Borras & Lafayette, 1994; Danan, 2004; Garza, 1991; Markham & Peter, 2003). Captions facilitate language learning by helping learners visualize what they hear, especially if the input is slightly beyond their linguistic ability (Danan, 2004). Captions may also serve to increase language comprehension by facilitating additional cognitive processes, such as greater depth of spoken-word processing (Bird & Williams, 2002). With the help of captions, learner now an active processor who explores, discovers, reflects and constructs knowledge – based on constructivist. Therefore, listening to the video alone is not enough to improve in learning languages. The learners need to be provided with captions in order to confirm their consensus, just like a quotation from Confucius (Chinese philosopher & reformer, 551 BC - 479 BC), “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” This quotation proved the importance of captioning videos in language learning to help learners understand better.