The Cognitive and Psychological Effects of YouTube Video Captions and Subtitles on Higher-Level German Language Learners

ICT multimedia learning affordances: role and impact on ESL learners' writing accuracy development

“…Some of the interesting examples about the kinds of errors (this group of learners would frequently make when they wrote in English) which were noticed and corrected with the help of enhanced captions of YouTube videos (i.e., by way of conscious comparison between their own output and target language input in these videos) were related to the right use of word choice (e.g., *take care about, *in Friday, *much calories), spelling (e.g., *pupulation, *dileshes), capitalization (e.g., the personal pronoun *i, *india), grammatical structures (e.g., *the India, *there's people, *she wants sleep), morphological forms (e.g., *I cannot stop eat, *the cat love the massage, *I'm agree), punctuations (e.g., …*because., *Did you remember me., *So I am using technol-ogy…). Moreover, the multimedia principle is crucial to explain how this group of learners were able to process L2 more efficiently with these YouTube multimedia videos as the enhanced captioning facilitated processing language input where the cognitive processes of learners meld the incoming aural linguistic input with visual words (in this case captions) (Yang, 2020). Taken together, the results of this study about the L2 writing accuracy development and the role and impact of the enhanced captions of You-Tube videos (Table 1) were in line with recent studies like (Yang, 2020) about the cognitive advantages of YouTube captioned videos which revealed that L2 learners could process language more easily with enhanced captions, and thus the improvement of their overall language skills.…”

“…Moreover, the multimedia principle is crucial to explain how this group of learners were able to process L2 more efficiently with these YouTube multimedia videos as the enhanced captioning facilitated processing language input where the cognitive processes of learners meld the incoming aural linguistic input with visual words (in this case captions) (Yang, 2020). Taken together, the results of this study about the L2 writing accuracy development and the role and impact of the enhanced captions of You-Tube videos (Table 1) were in line with recent studies like (Yang, 2020) about the cognitive advantages of YouTube captioned videos which revealed that L2 learners could process language more easily with enhanced captions, and thus the improvement of their overall language skills.…”

“…Moreover, these findings are culturally bound to Arabic learners of English in an English-speaking country, India. As it was indicated in similar studies like (Yang, 2020) that "other cultures and languages might prove to be considerably different, especially for languages which do not use Romanized characters".…”

“…Taylor (2005) concluded that a greater reliance on captions seems to require attentional trade-offs as lower proficiency learners reported difficulty in simultaneously processing audio, visuals, and captions. Quite recently, Yang (2020) found that enhanced captioning [within a multimedia learning context] plays a more positive role on the intermediate-high and advanced German learners' motivation likely due to more efficient language processing. More specifically, the videos are able to provide linguistic integrity, which allows the language learners to focus their incidental attention more effectively.…”

Students’ Perceptions of Distance Language Learning in Vocational Training

“…Students' preferences about testing can be used to improve oral activities for language learners, to complete tasks that need discussion among learners, to share reading and listening activities, and to write cooperatively with other learners". As for the second suggestion, research has demonstrated that the use of subtitled videos help learners to better understand foreign language as they combine image, sound and text (Yang, 2020). Regarding participants' suggestion to increase teaching hours, we would like to underline that two teaching hours a week for learning a foreign language is not sufficient either in the traditional classroom or the virtual one.…”