An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Subtitle Forms On College Students' English Audio-visual Learning

With the development of multimedia technology,videos have been employed more and more widely in foreign language teaching.In order to better promote the teaching effect of videos,teachers generally tend to choose video materials with subtitles.At home and abroad,there have been numerous studies on the effects of subtitles on listening comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition,and the effects of subtitles on learners with different levels are also explored.Researchers generally believe that subtitles can promote learners' listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition;however,there is no final conclusion concerning which subtitle form is the best.The investigation of subtitle forms mainly focuses on the forms of none subtitles,native language subtitles and foreign language subtitles,but seldom on bilingual subtitles.It is also unclear how subtitle forms affect learners' audio-visual anxiety,which urgently needs empirical support.In this study,200 non-English major sophomores are selected as subjects,and videos with the same content and different subtitle forms(no subtitles,English subtitles,Chinese plus English subtitles and Chinese Subtitles)are used as audio-visual materials.The influence of four subtitle forms on college students' English audio-visual learning is investigated through teaching experiment.Specifically,the research examines the effects of subtitle forms on learners' listening comprehension,incidental vocabulary acquisition and audio-visualanxiety as well as the effects of subtitle forms on learners with different level and on different levels of understanding objectives.The results show that,on the whole,Chinese plus English subtitles and Chinese subtitles are more effective in promoting learners' listening comprehension and reducing their audio-visual anxiety.Chinese plus English subtitles are also the most effective in facilitating incidental vocabulary acquisition.For high-level learners,Chinese plus English subtitles are more effective to promote listening comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition.Chinese subtitles are helpful to improve listening comprehension and reduce audio-visual anxiety.For low-level learners,Chinese plus English subtitles and Chinese subtitles have advantages in reducing audio-visual anxiety.In macro understanding,Chinese plus English subtitles and English subtitles have better effect,while in micro understanding,Chinese plus English subtitles and Chinese subtitles have more advantages.On this basis,the study puts forward some suggestions for the rational use of video subtitles in teaching.According to different teaching aims,teachers should select appropriate subtitle forms for learners of different levels to promote their English audio-visual learning.