The effects of captioning on listening comprehension of English as a Second Language in a computer-based interactive videodisc system

Purpose. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of captioning used as knowledge of results feedback on listening comprehension of English as a second language in a computer-based interactive videodisc system. The investigator applied a systems approach (Dick & Carey, 1990) to develop an interactive videodisc program by repurposing the film The Last Emperor. The program was used to investigate the effect of the treatment on Chinese students' listening comprehension.;Procedure. Subjects were 72 Chinese college freshmen at National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan, the Republic of China. They were randomly selected based on the English scores of the Joint College Entrance Examination and assigned to above or below average reading proficiency groups and captioning or no captioning treatment groups. Each group participated in an interactive videodisc program for one hour a week in alternating weeks for ten weeks in an effort to improve their listening comprehension.;Listening comprehension was measured by a test developed by the investigator using the movie and Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) developed by the Educational Testing Service (ETS). An equivalent form of the TOEFL Listening Comprehension test was administered to students as a pre-test to assess any improvements as a result of the experimental treatment.;Findings. A two-way analysis of covariance was used to analyze the test data. On the movie test, the results showed that the captioning group performed better than the no captioning group. A significant difference between reading proficiency groups in post-test performance scores in favor of the above average reading proficiency group was found. The results also revealed that there was no interaction between treatment and reading proficiency in post-test mean scores on the movie test. On the TOEFL Listening Comprehension test, there was no statistically significant difference between the treatment groups' mean scores. However, there was a statistically significant difference between reading proficiency groups in post-test performance scores in favor of the above average reading proficiency group. There was no interaction between treatment and reading proficiency for post-test mean scores on the TOEFL Listening Comprehension. Based on these findings, it was concluded that the captioning had significant effect on the improvement of the listening comprehension on specific content comprehension.