The Effects of Advance Organizers and Subtitles on EFL Learners' Listening Comprehension Skills

Abstract

The present research reports the findings of three experiments which explore how subtitles and advance organizers affect English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' listening comprehension of authentic videos. The EFL learners in this study were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The control group received no treatment and the experimental group received treatment with the experimental conditions of which comprised several types of scaffolds-subtitles, unaided advance organizers and teacher-guided advance organizers. The results show that the presence of subtitles and advance organizers assisted EFL learners' listening comprehension of CNN news reports. However, there was no significant relationship between English proficiency and the experimental conditions. All of the students benefited from the scaffolding regardless of proficiency level. The students' attitudes toward the specific type of scaffolding were also probed and the reasons for their preferences for one type of scaffold over another are also explained.

Comparing Two Pre-listening Supports with Iranian EFL Learners: Opportunity or Obstacle

“…It also confirmed the helpfulness of this support. The results of the current study are in concordance with a number of previous studies (Chang and Read, 2007;Elkhafifi, 2005, Sherman, 1997, Wang, 2005. However, in most of these studies the topics of listening passages were familiar to students, but one of the topics selected for the purpose of the present study was unfamiliar for the majority of the students, i.e.…”

“…Regarding the role of question preview, previous research is inconclusive. Some approved its value and argued that this support was helpful as it helped test takers by giving extra information (Chang and Read, 2007;Elkhafifi, 2005;Sherman, 1997;Wang, 2005) while others doubted its value (Chang, 2008). Sherman (1997) investigated the effect of previewing questions.…”

“…In another study conducted to examine the effect of pre-listening supports and listening proficiency on comprehension Wang (2005) argued that subjects who had a high listening proficiency performed better than low proficiency students irrespective of pre-listening treatment. Wang's study involved 180 fourth-year students in a five-year program at a college in Taiwan.…”

“…A number of studies (Chang and Read, 2006;Chung and Huang, 1998;Sadighi and Zare, 2006;Sherman, 1997;Shohamy and Inbar, 1991;Tyler, 2001;Wang, 2005) confirmed the effectiveness of topic preparation (TP) and question preview (QP) and suggested that listeners might make a relationship between the succeeding messages and pre-existing background knowledge to be able to construct a meaningful interpretation. Based on this point of view, students should be assisted to link their prior knowledge to the new information.…”

The Role of Subtitling and Dubbing in Arabic Vocabulary Acquisition: A Contrastive Study

“…Several studies have reported on the positive effects of subtitling on Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Researchers have found that students can improve their listening skills (Başaran & Köse 2013;Yang 2014;Campbell 2016), reading skills (Koskinen and Wilson;Jensema 1985), and speaking performance (Borras & Lafayette 1994). Other researchers have considered the use of subtitling activities within the language classroom such as (Koolstra and Beentjes 1999;Perez, Noortgate & Desmet 2013;Mousavi & Gholami 2014;Aloqaili 2014).…”