| This study was designed to examine the effects of closed-captioned TV on the listening comprehension of intermediate ESL students. Vocabulary/phrase acquisition and general comprehension, which play important roles in listening comprehension, were designed as two subscales in the study. The correlation between listening comprehension and other factors such as starting age of ESL instruction, length of time in the USA, length of ESL instruction, length of time in private language schools, length of time with tutors and length of time traveling in English speaking countries were examined. The research also covered subjects' perceptions of the effects of CCTV on ESL learning.; A group of 30 students with intermediate levels of ESL proficiency, enrolled in the Language Academy at the University of Southern California for the summer of 1998, participated in this study. The subjects were randomly assigned to one of the two treatment groups: traditional TV and CCTV. The two groups of students watched the same episode of Family Album USA, a popular ESL video series, and then took the same listening test which was derived from the episode. Each question of the listening test contained language that actually occurred somewhere in the episode.; one-way ANOVA procedures were conducted to compare the group differences in the effects of CCTV on listening comprehension and on the subscales of vocabulary/phrase acquisition and general comprehension. The results showed that the group with captioning scored significantly better on the listening comprehension test as well as on the two subscales than the group without captioning. All other factors examined in the study, such as age of starting ESL instruction, length of ESL instruction, etc. did not correlate with the listening comprehension test.; A t test was conducted to analyze the subjects, perceptions of the effects of CCTV on ESL learning and significant results were found: CCTV helped the students understand the story better; CCTV helped the students with their vocabulary/phrase acquisition; CCTV improved the students' listening skill; and watching TV was an enjoyable way to learn English. |
