This study aims to investigate whether subtitles have a beneficial effect on incidental L2- vocabulary acquisition among students in the first grade of secondary school aged 12-13 years old....Show moreThis study aims to investigate whether subtitles have a beneficial effect on incidental L2- vocabulary acquisition among students in the first grade of secondary school aged 12-13 years old. Previous studies seem to indicate that subtitles have a beneficial effect on L2-vocabulary acquisition in adults, and so a case study was devised to investigate the effects of subtitles on children. These children were subjected to a cartoon YouTube clip of approximately 3 minutes recounting Aesop’s fable ‘The Frogs Who Desired a King’; half of the children viewed this clip with subtitles in their native language, or L1, the other half with captions in their non-native language, or L2. This clip contained a total of 15 words that were assumed the children would not yet know. After having seen the clip, the children were asked to provide accurate translations of these words to test the possible effects of the subtitles. The eventual conclusion was that subtitles seemed to have no effect on incidental L2-vocabulary acquisition, while captions may actually prove beneficial.Show less