Learning vocabulary with the support of sustained exposure to captioned video: do proficiency and aptitude make a difference?

Abstract

Video viewing can be a valuable resource to expose students to large quantities of input so they can improve their vocabulary and content comprehension. Most studies so far have used short clips and have not explored in much detail the effects of individual differences (IDs) such as aptitude, listening skills and vocabulary size. This paper aims to address this gap by exposing 57 Grade-10 EFL learners and 60 university students to captioned video. On a weekly basis over an academic term, all learners were pre-taught a set of target words (TWs); half of them (the experimental group) were additionally shown captioned episodes from a TV series containing the TWs. All learners were pre-and posttested on the TW forms and meanings. Results revealed significant differences between experimental and control groups in the learning of TWs in the high school population, but not among university participants. A main effect for proficiency was observed on the learning scores for both TW forms and meanings. However, language aptitude was only a significant factor for TW meanings. Results are discussed regarding how video viewing and these IDs mediate vocabulary learning.

Multimodal Input in Sla Research

“…Second, this special issue as well as other recently published studies demonstrate that L2 research into multimodal input should take into account a variety of factors in the study design. With regard to learner-related factors, it has been found that proficiency level (e.g., Suárez & Gesa, 2019), prior vocabulary knowledge (e.g., Feng & Webb, 2020;Peters & Webb, 2018;Puimège & Peters, 2020), age (Muñoz, 2017), or working memory (e.g., Gass et al, 2019;Montero Perez, 2020) may impact learning gains and the processing of multimodal input. Studies also indicate that including factors related to the target items (e.g., frequency of occurrence, part of speech, visual representation) or to the input (e.g., lexical coverage of TV episodes) is not only important to control for these variables but it also indicates whether these factors influence the learning process from multimodal input (Peters & Webb, 2018;Puimège & Peters, 2020).…”

Watching Captioned Authentic Videos for Incidental Vocabulary Learning

“…as well as to other variables, such as participants' proficiency level, motivation, aptitude, etc. (see Benati and Angelovska 2016;Malone 2018;Cervatiuc 2018 Lin andSiyanova-Chanturia 2010;Chen et al 2018;Suárez and Gesa 2019). For instance, according to Lin and Siyanova-Chanturia (2010), Chen et al (2018), and Suárez and Gesa (2019), participants' proficiency level is one of the crucial factors that affects language and vocabulary learning through watching captioned authentic videos.…”

“…The subjects of this study may have gotten lost in unknown words and, therefore, could not focus on the target lexis. Moreover, apart from processing vocabulary, images and captions they had to deal with processing other aspects of the video, such as external references or grammatical forms (Suárez and Gesa 2019). Another factor related to the choice of the target words is concerned with their frequency and the total number of the target items.…”

“…For one thing, authentic videos, unlike educational ones, are intended for native people (Lin and Siyanova-Chanturia 2014). As a result, the challenge of understanding natural language while watching videos can cause serious problems not only for beginners, but also for intermediate TL learners (Harmer 2003;Suárez and Gesa 2019). For example, knowledge of the most frequent 3,000 families is required in order to be able to understand 95% of the words in movies (Webb and Rodgers 2009).…”

Effects of modality preference and working memory capacity on captioned videos in enhancing L2 listening outcomes

“…Similarly, Peters (2019) also observed that full captioning significantly enhances L2 learners' listening comprehension. In addition to its effectiveness in promoting L2 listening outcomes, Chen, Liu and Todd (2018) and Pujadas and Muñoz (2019) both provided positive empirical evidence supporting the potential of full captions for the acquisition of vocabulary forms (see also Suárez & Gesa, 2019). Despite the above positive evidence, a few studies have suggested that the effectiveness of full captions may be modulated by L2 learners' modality preference (visual vs. auditory; see Lee, Liu & Tseng, 2019) and individual differences in preference for visual input (i.e.…”