The role of captioning and focused practice in vocabulary learning through video viewing

This study examines the effects of watching captioned and non-captioned five successive episodes of a TV show and the pre-teaching of vocabulary on L2 (foreign language) vocabulary acquisition by young EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners in Turkey. The participants were L1 Turkish and L2 English 6th graders studying in a state school. Four whole classes were randomly assigned to one control group and three different experimental groups: (1) captions with pre-teaching, (2) captions with no-pre-teaching, (3) no caption, and no pre-teaching. A pre-/post-/delayed-posttest design was used. Following the delayed-post-tests, a questionnaire investigating exposure to English outside the classroom was administered to the same group of participants. The results of the study showed that there was no significant difference between the groups in relative and raw vocabulary gains in the meaning recognition tests. The results of both post- and delayed-post-tests revealed that there was a significant difference between groups in terms of meaning and from recall tests. The group that was pre-taught the target items (TIs) and watched the videos with captions performed better than the other groups. Relative and raw vocabulary gains were retained as there was no decrease in overall vocabulary gains of the three experimental groups based on the delayed-post-test scores. Furthermore, the English exposure survey revealed English TV watching behaviors of the participants in relation to the use of L1 and L2 subtitles.