The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of using Spanish captions, English captions, or no captions with a Spanish‐language soundtrack on intermediate university‐level Spanish as a Foreign Language students' comprehension of DVD passage material. A total of 169 intermediate (fourth‐semester)students predicated as intact groups in the study. The passage material consisted of a 7‐minute DVD episode about preparation for the Apollo 13 space‐exploration mission. The students viewed only one of three passage treatment conditions: Spanish captions, English captions, or no captions. The English‐language‐dependent measures consisted of a written summary generated by the students and a 10‐item multiple‐choice test. The statistically significant results revealed that the English captions group performed at a substantially higher level than the Spanish captions group, which in turn performed at a considerably higher level than the no captions group on both dependent measures. The pedagogical value of using multilingual soundtracks and multilingual captions in various ways to enhance second language reading and listening comprehension is discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of captioned videotapes on advanced, university‐level ESL students' listening word recognition. A total of 118 ESL students participated in the study. The videotaped materials consisted of episodes from two separate educational television programs concerning whales and the civil rights movement. The results for both passages revealed that the availability of captions significantly improved the ESL students' ability to recognize words on the videotapes that also appeared on the subsequent listening‐only (listening stems and alternatives) multiple‐choice tests. Recommendations for using captions to enhance second language student listening and reading comprehension are included.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of using Spanish captions, English captions, or no captions with a Spanish language soundtrack on intermediate university-level Spanish as a Foreign Language students' listening/reading comprehension. A total of 213 intermediate (fourth semester) students participated as intact groups in the study. The passage material consisted of a DVD episode (seven minutes) presenting information concerning preparation for the Apollo 13 NASA space exploration mission. The students viewed only one of three passage treatment conditions: Spanish captions, English captions, or no captions. The Spanish language dependent measure consisted of a 20-item multiple-choice listening comprehension test. The statistically significant results revealed that the English captions group performed at a considerably higher level than the Spanish captions group which in turn performed at a substantially higher level than the no captions group on the listening test. The article concludes with a discussion of the pedagogical implications of using multilingual captions in a variety of ways to enhance second language listening and reading comprehension.

This article describes a study assessing the influence of religious‐specific background knowledge on adult ESL listening comprehension. Sixty‐five university‐level students participated in the study. Twenty‐eight students self‐reported being religion‐neutral with virtually no knowledge of Moslem or Christian religious rites. Sixteen of the students declared themselves to be practicing Moslems, and twenty students reported being practicing Christians. The students listened to one passage describing the prayer rituals of Islam and a second passage describing the prayer rituals of Christianity. The results clearly suggest that passage content exerts a powerful influence on the listening comprehension scores of students professing close ties to a particular religion. Particularly strong differences were observed regarding the recall of major idea units. Less striking, yet obviously supportive differences were in evidence with respect to the creation of schema‐appropriate elaborations and inappropriate distortions. The religion‐neutral students performed somewhat erratically in that they recalled more major idea units pertaining to the Moslem passage, but also provided more appropriate elaborations regarding the Christian passage. In addition, retrospective interviews that yielded insightful information that generally supported the quantitative findings were conducted.