Effects of Closed Captions on English Vocabulary Acquisition
Abstract: This study is designed to investigate the effects of captions on vocabulary acquisition. The discussion is based on the statistic results of pre- and posttest scores achieved by 4 groups of subjects who are freshmen from the English Department of Foreign Languages School of Shenzhen University. These subjects were shown the same video clip but with either different captions or no captions. The study also analyzes the influences of word frequency and part of speech on subjects’ performance. The findings show that: 1) Captions facilitated student’s vocabulary acquisition. Students watching the video clip with either English captions or Chinese captions learned more words than the other groups which did not have access to captions. 2) High word frequency usually helps students’ vocabulary acquisition. However, a vivid visual presentation of what a word describes and impressive sound effects could make up for low word frequency and made the low frequency word with these visual and audio complements easier to learn. 3) Common nouns and verbs and adjectives that are used with common nouns were comparatively easy to learn. When these words appeared, there were usually relevant objects available on the screen, by which students could refer to in order to understand the new word.
Keywords: Captions, Vocabulary Acquisition, Word Frequency, Part of Speech
闭合字幕对英语词汇认知影响
摘 要 本文旨在研究字幕对词汇习得的影响，并通过实验与数据分析的方法，对此论题进行了研究。深圳大学外国语学院英语系大一新生为此次实验的实验对象，有字幕组别与无字幕组别均所采用相同的影音材料与实验方法。通过对数据的统计，论文对实验对象在前后两次测试中所得的分数进行了比较与分析，同时也对词汇出现的频率与词性对词汇习得的影响进行了讨论与研究。结果发现：①字幕能有效地促进学生对词汇的习得。观看英文或中文字幕的学生均比在无字幕组别中的学生学会更多的词汇。②词汇的高出现频率有助于学生对词汇的习得。然而，词汇在影视画面中生动的视觉呈现，以及令人印象深刻的音频效果能够弥补词汇因出现频率低而不易被学会的劣势，并且使那些在视觉上与听觉上具有优势的低频率词汇更易被学会。③相比较而言，普通名词以及那些与普通名词同时使用的动词和形容词更容易被学会。因为当这些词汇出现的时候，屏幕上往往会出现与之相关的事物，而这提供了学生能学会该词汇所需的信息与线索。
关 键 词 字幕；词汇习得；单词出现频率；词性
Contents
Abstract 1
摘 要 1
Introduction 3
1.1 Brief introduction 3
1.2 Rationale and Research Questions 3
2 Methodology 4
2.1 Subjects 4
2.2 Materials 4
2.2.1 Video Clip 4
2.2.2 Computers and headphones 4
2.3 Measures 5
2.3.1 Pretest 5
2.3.2 Posttest 6
2.4 Procedures 6
3 Data analysis and results 7
3.1 The overall results 8
3.2 Frequency of words 10
3.3 Part of Speech 14
4 Discussion and Conclusion 17
References 19
Acknowledgements 20
