Comparison of Iranian Monolingual and Bilingual EFL Students’ Listening Comprehension in Terms of Watching English Movie with Latinized Persian Subtitles

Roghayeh Yamchi,Vishal Kumar

doi:10.5539/elt.v9n5p65

Abstract

<p>The main concern of the present study was to compare Iranian monolingual and bilingual EFL students’ listening comprehension in terms of Latinized Persian subtitling of English movie to see whether there was a significant difference between monolinguals and bilinguals on immediate linguistic comprehension of the movie. Latinized Persian subtitling was representing Persian language in Latin script. To achieve this end, an ex post facto design was employed. The homogenized participants of this study were 24 Persian monolingual students and 22 Azeri-Persian bilingual students. One listening comprehension test which was based on the linguistic information of the movie was administered to both groups of monolinguals and bilinguals. The results of Mann-Whitney U test revealed a significant difference between two groups; that is, monolinguals outperformed bilinguals on immediate linguistic comprehension of the movie. Finally, the study concludes with some pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.</p>

Highlights

Listening comprehension is one of the most complex skills in language learning (Oxford, 1993), especially in the case of an unidirectional listening mode where the listener is unable to interact with the speaker as in the case of watching a movie to comprehend its content (Graham, 2006)
One listening comprehension test which was based on the linguistic information of the movie was administered to both groups of monolinguals and bilinguals
The results of the study showed that bilingual students performed significantly better than monolingual students in listening comprehension test

Summary

Introduction

Listening comprehension is one of the most complex skills in language learning (Oxford, 1993), especially in the case of an unidirectional listening mode where the listener is unable to interact with the speaker as in the case of watching a movie to comprehend its content (Graham, 2006). In this context, the listener must process the input in real time (Vandergrift, 2007), which puts much pressure on the learner and leads to anxiety in the learner (Arnold, 2000). Some of these factors are linked to the characteristics of the audience members as their monolingual or bilingual statues and others to the various versions of one movie as the type of subtitles presented on the screen (Bairstow & Lavaur, 2011)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion