Captioned Television Videotapes: Effects of Visual Support on Second Language Comprehension

Abstract

This study examined the effects of captioned video material on ESL student comprehension with videotaped episodes presenting both low and high audio/video correlation as defined by Garza (1991). Prior research has been restricted to high audio/video correlation material in which the audio track was strongly supported by the video portion (visual images). A total of thirty-seven advanced and thirty-four intermediate ESL students participated in the experiment. The results revealed that both groups were able to recall significantly more idea units (p < .01) when the captions were available with the episode presenting a low level of visual support (low audio/video correlation). Conversely, caption availability did not substantially improve student recall with the episode presenting a high audio/video correlation.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Anderson

and Lorch

, Looking at Television: Action or Reaction, in Childrens Understanding of Television, Bryant

(ed.), pp. 249–263, Academic Press, New York, 1983.

Huston

and Wright

, Childrens Processing of Television, in Childrens Understanding of Television, Bryant

(ed.), pp. 110–117, Academic Press, New York, 1983.

Ashley

, Reading Television, Educational Leadership, 39, pp. 295–296, 1982.

Salomon

, Television is Easy and Print is Tough: The Differential Investment of Mental Effort as a Function of Perceptions and Attributions, Journal of Educational Psychology, 76, pp. 647–658, 1984.

Boyd

and Vader

, Captioned Television for the Deaf, American Annals of the Deaf, 117, pp. 34–37, 1972.

Wilson

and Koskinen

, Closed-Captioned Television, The Exceptional Parent, 16, pp. 46–47, 1986.

National Captioning Institute , The 1988 TeleCaption 3000 Warranty Card Analysis, Falls Church, Virginia, 1989.

Goldman

and Goldman

, Reading with Close-Captioned TV, Journal of Reading, 31, pp. 458–461, 1988.

Koskinen

Wilson

, and Jensema

, Closed-Captioned Television: A New Tool for Reading Instruction, Reading World, 24, pp. 1–7, 1985.

10.

Markham

, The Effects of Captioned Videotapes on the Listening Comprehension of Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced ESL Students, Educational Technology, 22, pp. 41–45, 1989.

11.

Garza

, Evaluating the Use of Captioned Video Material in Advanced Foreign Language Learning, Foreign Language Annals, 24, pp. 239–258, 1991.

12.

Neuman

and Koskinen

, Captioned Television as Comprehensible Input: Effects on Incidental Word Learning from Context of Language Minority Students, Reading Research Quarterly, 27, pp. 95–106, 1992.

13.

Mueller

, Visual Contextual Cues and Listening Comprehension: An Experiment, Modern Language Journal, 64, pp. 335–340, 1980.

14.

Steffensen

Joag-Dev

, and Anderson

, A Cross-Cultural Perspective on Reading Comprehension, Reading Research Quarterly, 15, pp. 10–29, 1979.

15.

Carrell

, Content and Formal Schemata in ESL Reading, TESOL Quarterly, 21, pp. 461–481, 1987.

16.

Lee

, The Effects of Three Components of Background Knowledge on Second Language Reading, Modern Language Journal, 70, pp. 350–354, 1986.

17.

Hughes

, Testing for Language Teachers, University Press, Cambridge, England, 1989.