The Effect of Movies with Different Types of Subtitles on Incidental English Vocabulary Learning of Iranian High School EFL Learners

This study investigated the effect of different types of subtitles on incidental vocabulary learning among Iranian EFL learners. To this end, 60 high school students in Behbahan were selected after taking a proficiency test. The test was administered to ensure participants' homogeneity. Participants were randomly assigned to three experimental groups, namely, Bimodal group (A), Standard group (B) and Reversed group (C). They watched ten video clips selected from three animated movies with different types of subtitles: A) Bimodal subtitles (both English audio and subtitle), B) Standard subtitles (English audio and Persian subtitle) and C)Reversed subtitles (Persian audio and English subtitle). Research instrumentation included a pretest and posttest. Participants took a pretest containing new words selected from the clips. After ten treatment sessions, the posttest was administered. Data were analyzed descriptively and inferentially. To arrive at any difference between the three different types of subtitles, the researchers conducted one-way ANOVA. The results obtained from the test showed that participants in reversed subtitling group performed significantly different and learned more new vocabulary items. Standard subtitling was the second type of subtitling which was shown to be more effective than bimodal subtitling. Also, the effect of different types of subtitles on incidental English vocabulary learning between male and female was investigated in this study. To arrive at any difference between male and female in incidental English vocabulary learning an independent samples test was performed. The results obtained from the test showed that there was no significant difference between males and females in incidental English vocabulary learning.