Effects of English and Persian Subtitles on Oral Fluency and Accuracy of Intermediate Iranian EFL Learners

The present study attempted to explore the effects of employing English and Persian subtitles on the Iranian EFL learners oral fluency and accuracy. From among 100 intermediate Iranian EFL learners in Donyaye Sokhan Language Institute in Isfahan, Iran, 60 were selected in the wake of administering the PET (Preliminary English Test) as the participants of the study, and were randomly divided into two experimental groups and one control group. The control group was exposed to movies without any subtitles, while one of the experimental groups watched movies with English subtitles and the other watched movies with Persian subtitles. The format of pretest and posttest was semi-structured interview in which students answered several questions. Fluency scores were derived out of the formula suggested by Yuan and Ellis (2003), while accuracy was quantified through Foster and Skehan’s (1996) procedure. The analysis of the obtained data via SPSS indicated that (a) the successful performance of the participants in the experimental groups was shown to be attributable to using subtitles as a method for improving oral fluency and accuracy, (b) there were no significant differences between the two experimental groups, and (c) oral fluency and accuracy of the control group did not ameliorate significantly in the course of this experiment.