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Incorporating videos with captions and subtitles in foreign and second language teaching is believed to help to improve foreign language learning (Behroozizad & Majidi, 2015; Guillory, 1998; Winke, Gass, & Sydorenko, 2010). As “a mediating device” (Vanderplank, 1988, 280), captions of audio-visual materials make visible the auditory information of the foreign language which learners hear (Danan, 2004) and promote language comprehension by facilitating additional cognitive processing(Bird & Williams, 2002). Recent studies in the field of second language (L2) acquisition have been how subtitles and captions input affects the ‘picking up’ new words and vocabulary learning (Montero Perez, Peters, & Desmet, 2018; Peters & Webb, 2018; Peters, Heynen, & Puimège, 2016; Puimège & Peters, 2019; Peters, 2019;Rodgers, 2018;Rodgers & Webb, 2019), and facilitate the comprehension of connected speech (Wong, Lin, Wong, & Cheung, 2020) and improve learners’ pronunciation (Mahdi, 2017).Most of the studies so far, however, have focused on the use of normal closed subtitles or captions (e.g., full captions), which are often referred to as verbatim captions. Only few research has been done on using more highlighted or focused captions, e.g., keyword captions or partial captions, which consist of parts of the verbatim captions and essential words of a sentence (Behroozizad & Majidi, 2015;;Mahdi, 2017; Montero Perez, Peters, & Desmet, 2013; Montero Perez, Peters, Clarebout, & Desmet, 2014; Montero Perez et al., 2018;Winke et al., 2010). The basic premise underlying using the highlighted or focused captions is that second language learners have chances to learn the new words if sufficient attention recourses are allocated to new words (Ellis.1994; Hulstijn, 2001). The highlighted or focused captions can direct L2 learners’ attention to new words to facilitate the noticing of those words in order to have chances to learn them (Schmitt, 2008). Moreover, though previous studies revealed that learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) with different English proficiency levels showed different responses to different caption types (Hayati & Mohmedi, 2011; Hsu, Hwang,& Chang, 2014; Lwo & Lin, 2012;Taylor, 2005; Vulchanova, Aurstad, Kvitnes, & Eshuis, 2015), little research has been done to investigate the responses to the different caption modes by EFL learners of different English proficiency levels.
The present study, therefore, investigates the effects of different caption modes on the comprehension of both content and vocabulary by Chinese EFL learners. The target language proficiency factor is also taken into consideration to investigate how Chinese EFL learners of different English proficiency levels respond to different caption modes in their vocabulary and video comprehension.