Effects of Dual Subtitles on Chinese Students’ English Listening Comprehension and Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of four subtitle modes on the listening comprehension of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) talks and academic vocabulary learning of intermediate (non-English major) and advanced (English major) English as foreign language (EFL) learners. A total of 272 Chinese college sophomore students were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental groups: Dual subtitles, English subtitles, Chinese subtitles, and no subtitles. The participants viewed four TED talks videos over a period of two weeks and were pretested (vocabulary) and posttested (vocabulary, listening comprehension). The results demonstrated that there were no statistically significant differences among the four subtitle modes for intermediate learners. However, the findings showed significant differences among the four subtitle modes for advanced learners. Specifically, the no subtitle and dual subtitle groups performed significantly better than the English subtitle group on vocabulary learning. The Chinese subtitle group significantly outperformed the no subtitle group on listening comprehension. Taken together, the results for advanced English students indicated that the redundancy effect may exist in vocabulary learning and that adding dual subtitles may not impose high cognitive load. Accordingly, this study offered important implications for learning English through watching videos using different subtitle modes for Chinese students.