The effects of captioning and viewing original versions in English on long-term acquisition and comprehension of the English language

Resumen

The skills enhancement when English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students are acquiring the language has been recently affected by the rapid spread of broadband Internet (Pemberton, Fallahkhair, & Masthoff, 2005). More particularly since the appearance of Original Version (OV) video streaming, as it is now available for many English language teachers and students that take advantage of this verbal medium, which provides new opportunities for education and culture (Vanderplank, 2016, 2019). Scholars like Danan (2004, 2015) have studied the case of how subtitled audiovisual material may be challenging for EFL learners because both audio and visual channels have to be processed simultaneously. Others like Montero, Peters, & Desmet (2015, 2018) have written about the effects of captions on the comprehension of audiovisuals, the incidental acquisition of words and L2 video comprehension. In the present work, we have investigated, through empirical research, the transition from CEFR B1, through B2, towards C1 of different EFL students that have proved how unadapted captioned videos can affect the way they eventually perform when: (1) Gist understanding is evaluated by means of leaving the captions on (B1 students in Study 1). (2) The learners’ listening skills enhancement varies if they are in the habit of watching OV on a regular basis (B1-B2 students in Study 2), and (3) There is an observation of how advanced students (C1 students in Study 3) reading and listening skills improve depending on their level of voluntary exposure to OV videos in the long-term. Results lead us to conclude that the B2 level is the tipping point for students to really enjoy and take advantage of real video streaming TV shows in English as lower levels showed inconsistencies in results amongst them. Complementarily, C1 students that have been independently watching OV TV programmes on a regular basis, showed better outcomes in the listening comprehension tests than those who did not. Nevertheless, the reading comprehension results showed no difference between the two groups.