The aim of this thesis was to test the hypothesis that teaching secondary students English by means of the audiovisual translation mode subtitling will increase students’ vocabulary on a...Show moreThe aim of this thesis was to test the hypothesis that teaching secondary students English by means of the audiovisual translation mode subtitling will increase students’ vocabulary on a predetermined topic. Little research on watching subtitled television programmes for English language acquisition has yet been conducted in the Netherlands and no research has been conducted in which the focus was on one specific topic of vocabulary. To test the hypothesis, a six-week study was held among secondary school students who watched an English-spoken programme either with or without English subtitles. The vocabulary used in this programme was similar to the vocabulary used in the course books at the school. One group of participants served as the control group and watched the programme without any subtitles, while another group of participants served as the experimental group and watched the programme with intralingual subtitles (subtitles in the same language as the soundtrack). The results of this six-week study show that watching an English-spoken programme with English subtitles is an effective approach to learning new vocabulary on a specific topic.Show less
In previous studies, digital storybooks with dynamic illustrations have been found to be beneficial for expressive language acquisition of second language learners with limited vocabularies ...Show moreIn previous studies, digital storybooks with dynamic illustrations have been found to be beneficial for expressive language acquisition of second language learners with limited vocabularies (Verhallen, Bus & de Jong, 2006; Verhallen & Bus, 2010). In this experiment, we examined the effects of digital storybooks with dynamic and static illustrations on the expressive vocabulary of 39 native Dutch speakers from 4 to 6 years of age. We investigated the role of visual attention at the illustrations in children’s vocabulary acquisition. Eye movements were recorded using eye-tracking methodology and showed that moving parts of the illustrations attract children’s attention. Furthermore, static illustrations were more facilitative than their dynamic counterparts for learning words expressively. In the dynamic condition longer fixation time at the depiction of targeted words was associated with lower word learning. In the static condition there was no relationship between looking behavior and word learning.Show less
