The Impact of Implementing Same-Language Subtitled Audiovisual Material on EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Comprehension and Spelling

Abstract

What pushes development forward is always a problem. And it is the ability to ask questions around that problem that triggers the journey of finding solutions. Scaling this down to our own environment within our own topic, EFL learners at the University of 8 Mai 1945 Guelma have been running low on motivation for their studies. Once they step inside the classroom, the idea of fun learning never crosses their mind, and as such, they internalize the idea that studying directly relates to boredom. Once they step outside the classroom, they throw that weight away from their shoulders by not doing anything related to studies. This is the psychology of the Algerian student. However, one thing they do for sure is consuming a huge amount of audiovisual content. Based on that, we suggested ‘same-language subtitling’ in hopes of, not only having a positive impact on their vocabulary comprehension and spelling but also increasing interest and autonomy. Accordingly, we took second-year students of the University of Guelma as a sample, and split it into two groups – an experimental group and a control group. These groups had to watch a two-minute excerpt video from a famous series, and then answer a set of questions on a worksheet. The only difference is that the first group had English subtitles while the second, Arabic subtitles. The overall results were in favor of experimental group with the same performance in vocabulary comprehension compared to the control group but a much better performance in spelling. In addition to that, a questionnaire provided similar reflections of students who already use English subtitles, confirming that improvement is, indeed, possible when watching content this way. Moreover, there was a complete agreement from all individuals on seeing more of such method in their classes. On this note, we conclude that the implementation of same-language subtitles for EFL learners’ is beneficial on many levels.