Abstract
An attempt of this study was to find out which type of subtitles is likely to be more effective in developing EFL tenth-grade students’ listening comprehension and vocabulary of a feature film: bimodal subtitling (English subtitles with English dialogues), standard subtitling (Thai subtitles with English dialogues), and English dialogues without subtitles. The data of this study was elicited from three groups of students in tenth-grade, 21 students per group, with similar English learning achievement level. Students in each group were assigned to watch an English dialogue movie with assigned subtitles, one type of subtitles per one group. They were tested on listening comprehension, content and vocabulary after they finished watching the movie. After all the students had finished taking the test, four persons from each group were randomly selected to be interviewed. The findings showed that Thai subtitles affect tenth-grade students’ listening comprehension more than English subtitles and not having any subtitles at all. The average scores for content and vocabulary showed that Thai subtitles affect students’ listening comprehension of content and vocabulary more than English subtitles and having no subtitles whatsoever.
Highlights
Foreign language learning can be considered from the four aspects of listening, speaking, reading, and writing
The participants of this research included 63 students in tenth-grade at Samakkhiwitthayakhom School in Chiang Rai. They were assigned into three groups as follows: English Subtitles Group (ESG) Thai Subtitles Group (TSG) Without Subtitles Group (WSG) Each group consisted of 21 students who were selected from 613 tenth-grade students based on their English O-NET (Ordinary National Educational Test) scores with similar O-NET scores ranging from 98 to 16
In response to the first research question, “To what extent do the tenth-grade student participant gain the knowledge of content and vocabulary, based on the listening comprehension and vocabulary test after watching an English-dialogue film with English subtitles, Thai subtitles and without subtitles?” Student scores from the listening comprehension and vocabulary test are presented in Figure 1 below
Summary
Foreign language learning can be considered from the four aspects of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Among these aspects, listening is an important capability of social interactions. There needs proper materials and teaching to support learners and vocabulary learning. Sawangwarorose (1986) claims that the right way to improve listening skills is knowing the meaning of vocabulary words. Knowing only a limited number of vocabulary words can cause failure in listening. Second language learning attaches less importance to listening skills due to instructors’ having low listening skills themselves; as a result, they do not give much attention to the preparation of materials for the skill compared to other skills (Jadejumlong, 1987). Instructors should provide the proper materials to support learners’ listening performance
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