Attitude toward the Use of Dual Subtitles by JapaneseEnglish Learners

Abstract

In recent times, a lot of Massive Open Online Courses (“MOOC”) contents are offered with dual subtitles in the native and target languages. However, there is little research that examines the relationship between their learning behavior and the role of subtitles. This study investigates the effects of subtitles in dual language (“Dual subtitles”) English and Japanese through a MOOC video, a platform that allows students to watch academic topics and contents provided in English (mainly academic lectures delivered in English at prestigious universities in the United States) on MOOCs with dual subtitles. According to the findings, more than 70% of the participants used dual subtitles most frequently and more than 95% of the participants affirmed that dual subtitles were useful or preferable to other subtitle modes (i.e., either Japanese only or English only). Although it is often stated that subtitles may place a cognitive load on language learners, the finding demonstrates that most participants had relatively positive feedback or attitude toward the use of dual subtitles and that some of them watched the video by rewinding or pausing the video. The findings revealed that a dual subtitle mode helped participants learn about the video in a variety of ways.