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Watching Cartoons With Subtitles Improves Children’s Foreign Language Acquisition



Author(s)

Mohammad Reza Ghorbani

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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2011.04.006

Bojnord University, Bojnord, Iran

Exposing the EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners to highly contextualized language input which involves the use of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) is becoming fashionable and prevalent. Some argue that input modification can help comprehension. This longitudinal case study was designed to provide evidence about whether target language subtitles are effective in providing modified input to the learners. The participant was an Iranian 12-year-old boy, Morteza, who watched more than 20 cartoons enhanced with English subtitles in two years. He was just indirectly observed but not controlled by the researcher. After mastering each cartoon, he took the direct listening, pronunciation, vocabulary and comprehension tests orally. The testing sessions were followed by an oral interview regarding the usefulness of subtitles. The results indicated that his performance incrementally improved. First, he preferred to watch the cartoons without subtitles. Then, he used English subtitles as a crutch during the second viewing of the cartoons. And finally, he used Persian subtitles during the third viewing to get the exact meaning of the new words and expressions. Now he speaks English fluently and understands the original cartoons without any subtitle quite well after watching them two or three times. His pronunciation is native-like at the age of 12.

information and communication technologies, modified input, subtitles, young learners, language acquisition