人人都需要 “字幕” 嗎?探討不同學習行為 如何影響字幕對英語聽力理解之效度

Abstract

Captioned video is widely used by L2 learners to enhance their exposure to native oral input beyond the classroom setting. Such exposure to captioning has been found to provide useful visual aid for parsing and understanding L2 oral discourse. Notwithstanding, a recent meta-analysis has shown that captioning exerts a selective effect on L2 learners with different input processing profiles. This study investigated whether L2 learners’ modality preferences (visual vs. auditory) and working memory capacity (high vs. low) would modulate the effect of captions on L2 listening outcomes. Results from 84 participants revealed that both cognitive variables impacted their L2 listening to different extents. Notably, working memory capacity modulates the impact of L2 learners’ modality preferences on their listening outcome. Modality preference did not exert any significant impact on the listening outcome from those with lower working memory capacity. For the L2 learners with high working memory capacity, their modality preference was crucial in determining their listening outcome; in this case, visual learners did best when watching videos with captions, whereas auditory learners exhibited the best listening outcome with captions were not provided. The findings in this study further shed light on the importance of taking individual differences into consideration when employing captioned videos to maximize L2 learners’ listening for different pedagogical purposes.