The Effects of Intralingual Subtitles on Jordanian University Students’ Foreign Language Learning

Abstract

Intralingual subtitling has become a functional accessibility didactic tool for EFL learning. Nevertheless, audio-visual translation (AVT)-- as a manifestation of educational technology-- has not been duly utilized as an EFL teaching approach in shaping the didactic and pedagogical platform and their immediate effects on foreign language learners. Hence, this study explores aspects of the EFL teaching/learning paradigm boosted by intralingual subtitling. The study sampled a population of 100 English and Translation Program students at a Jordanian university, representing an experimental group and a control group, of 50 students each. The experimental group received a four-month academic training in intralingual subtitling, while the control group had no exposure to the same experience. A TOEFL-based standardized test targeting listening comprehension, vocabulary building & recognition, and writing & spelling was administered to the two groups after the end of the term. A questionnaire was distributed to elicit the students' responses in the control group on the effectiveness of the intralingual subtitling technique in improving their proficiency in English. To compare the students' performance in the control group with their counterparts in the experimental group, the researchers calculated the scores in the three tested language skills for each group and ran a One-Way ANOVA test. The results showed that students with the intralingual subtitling experience demonstrated better performance in all three tested language skills. In the quantitative analysis of the questionnaire, the researchers calculated the percentage for each item's responses, provided the mean and standard error of it, and conducted a One-Sample T-Test for each subscale. The results showed statistically significant evidence that captioned videos helped students improve their listening comprehension, build and recognize new words, and improve their spelling. The current study recommends that intralingual subtitled YouTube videos be used more in EFL classrooms to improve students' language skills.