An Experimental Study Of The Effect Of Chinese&English Subtitles On Chinese College English Majors’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

As known to all, vocabulary is the basic unit of sentences. It plays a core role forlanguage learning. Therefore, having and mastering a large number of vocabularies is themost important thing. It is the foundation for language learning and communication. There aremainly two methods for vocabulary acquisition: intentional vocabulary acquisition andincidental vocabulary acquisition. Krashen (1989) claimed that incidental vocabularyacquisition achieved a better result than intentional vocabulary acquisition. What’s more, it isimpossible for English majors to invest all their energy into reciting words. They acquirevocabulary unconsciously through other methods, such as reading and listening. In recentyears, with the development of technology of Internet and multimedia, English original filmsare widely applied in English teaching. However, scholars both at home and abroad,especially domestic ones, primarily conduct studies of incidental vocabulary acquisition underreading environment. Studies under audio-visual environment are rare and still at adeveloping stage. The purpose of the study is to explore and examine whether Chinese&English subtitles have an effect on college English majors’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.The study takes Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Paivio’s Dual Coding Theory as thetheoretical framework. According to the research purpose, three research questions areproposed: Can Chinese&English subtitles help students to acquire vocabulary incidentally?Do Chinese&English subtitles gain better results than any other two modes of subtitles(Chinese subtitles&English subtitles)? One week later, can Chinese&English subtitles stillhelp students acquire vocabulary incidentally? The thesis adopts both quantitative andqualitative methods to analyze the results of the study. The author chose75English majorsophomores as the subjects. These75students were from three different classes of someuniversity of Liaoning province and the whole level of their English ability was equal. Theywere required to watch an English original film clip which lasted about20minutes. The filmclip had different kinds of subtitles. After watching the film clip, they were required to finishan immediate vocabulary test (the words are all from the film) and to finish a questionnaire.One week later, the author conducted a delayed test to verify whether Chinese&Englishsubtitles still could help students acquire vocabulary incidentally. The results showed that:Chinese&English subtitles really could help students acquire vocabulary incidentally.Chinese&English subtitles also gained a better result than the other two modes of subtitles(Chinese subtitles and English subtitles). The delayed test showed that Chinese&English subtitles still could help students acquire vocabulary incidentally.This thesis confirms that Krashen’s Input Hypothesis and Paivio’s Dual Coding Theorycan benefit English vocabulary teaching effectively in theory. At the same time, the study alsoproves that Chinese&English subtitles really can help Chinese college English majors toacquire vocabulary incidentally. The author hopes to inspire teachers and students to chooseand use subtitles reasonably in the course of teaching and learning, which is to seek the mostsuitable language learning boundary for students. By doing this, the students’ ability ofincidental vocabulary acquisition will be enhanced.