A Study Of Students’ Anxiety On Four Types Of Subtitled Videos In Business English Teaching

With the development of science and technology,multimodal teaching mode is widely used in modern classrooms,which is not only because of its ability to stimulate students’ interests but also its ability to facilitate students’ understanding of new knowledge.Multimodal teaching mode combines multiple modes of representations,including images,sounds,texts,etc.,to stimulate students’ multiple senses to assist learning.As authentic videos stimulate both visual and hearing senses of students,they are typical types of multiple modes of representations,which are favored by teachers and students.In the research area of multimodal teaching mode,most researchers focused on studying the effects of combing multiple modes,but few of them investigated different representations of the same mode in multimodality.For example,the differential subtitles in authentic videos can result in different stimulations on students.To fill the gap,the author aims at investigating the impact of subtitles from the perspective of Foreign Language Anxiety by exploring Business English students’ attitudes towards the use of differential subtitles(L1/L2/L1+L2/no subtitles)in authentic videos.This study applies the mixed research method to collect quantitative data through questionnaires and qualitative data through interviews.The questionnaire participants and interviewees are all undergraduate students majoring in Business English,and this study has received 110 copies of valid questionnaire surveys and 7copies of transcripts from interviews.Data will be analyzed through SPSS and Excel.The results indicated that: Firstly,no subtitles in authentic videos could result in high levels of listening anxiety of Business English students.Secondly,Business English students believed that the use of differential subtitles had different impacts on their anxiety.No subtitles and the L2 subtitles were regarded as having the potential to cause anxiety,while the L1 and bilingual subtitles were regarded as effective when it came to reducing anxiety.In terms of listening anxiety,most students agreed they had experienced high levels of listening anxiety during watching no-subtitled authentic videos and it could be lowered by using the bilingual subtitles and the L1 subtitles;in terms of reading anxiety,students preferred using bilingual subtitles to lower their anxiety,while the no-subtitled authentic videos were considered as most anxietyprovoking.Thirdly,students’ anxiety levels,foreign language proficiency,as well as learning achievement may have a correlation.To be specific,anxiety level may negatively correlate with foreign language proficiency and learning achievements.At the end of the study,some practical suggestions considering how to better use subtitles in authentic videos will be given to both the Business English teachers and learners.