Effect of Watching Movies With Bimodal, Standard and No-Subtitles on Incidental Learning of Formal and Informal Vocabulary

The use of movies, in which auditory and visual stimuli are combined, might be one of the ways of providing context for vocabulary learning, hence a source for incidental vocabulary learning. However, there is a debate on the role of subtitles and the best mode of subtitles in movies as a pedagogical tool in language learning. This study investigated the effect of watching movies with subtitles (bimodal and standard) and without subtitles on incidental learning of formal and informal vocabulary in the classroom. To this end, 90 Iranian advanced EFL participants, who were selected from a lager sample and were homogenized in terms of English proficiency and vocabulary size, were randomly assigned into three groups: (1) bimodal subtitling group (n = 30), who watched movies with English subtitles transcribed form English dialogues, (2) standard subtitling group (n = 30), who watched movies with Persian subtitles transcribed from English dialogues, and (3) no-subtitling group (n = 30), who watched movies without subtitles. To collect the data, a vocabulary test which consisted of 120 multiple-choice items, measuring the knowledge of formal (n = 60) and informal vocabulary (n = 60), was developed and administered to the participants. Three versions of 4 English movies (with bimodal, standard and no-subtitling) were made and each group of the study was exposed to one for 4 weeks. Then, the same vocabulary test was administered to the three groups as posttests. To analyze the data, a within-between subjects model of ANOVA was utilized. Data analysis showed that watching movies, regardless of the mode in which they were presented, improved the incidental learning of both formal and informal vocabulary. Besides, the results indicated the superiority of standard subtitled movies over bimodal and no-subtitled movies in enhancing the learnersʹ incidental vocabulary learning. However, no significant difference between the performance of bimodal subtitling and no-subtitling groups was found even though the informal and formal vocabulary scores improved more in the former group. Finally, no interaction between the subtitling mode and type of vocabulary was found. This study can have implications for the teachers to incorporated subtitled movies, particularly the ones with L2 in the soundtrack and L1 in subtitles, into their syllabuses in the classroom.