The Effects Of Different Types Of Captions And Their Activities On English Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is important in foreign language learning. Many foreign languageresearchers and teachers agree that vocabulary acquisition plays a prominent role inthe learners’ language learning process. Multimedia is popular in the languageteaching classroom, which assists authentic input together with exposure to targetculture. With its popular application in the language teaching classroom, captionedvideos have become powerful pedagogical tools. Many researchers have proved thatthe captions have many advantages in language learning, the study intents toexamine the effects of different captions on vocabulary acquisition through usingdifferent tasks.By employing an empirical method, the present study elaborates on ChineseEFL university students’ vocabulary acquisition while watching captioned film clipwith different tasks. All students enroll in the degree level were in the same level ofhigh English proficiency. They are given similar teaching materials and procedure,but the shown film clip is presented with different type of captions, the first threegroups are with Chinese captions, the last three groups are with English captions.Before the vocabulary test, Group1and Group4finish Task1: a readingcomprehension, Group2and Group5finish Task2: a blank filling with readingcomprehension and Group3and Group6do not have tasks.The percentage of the target words is listed and the effects of different captionsand tasks on subjects’ vocabulary spelling and meaning are compared by theone-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and the independent-sample t test methods.The analysis of the data reveals the following findings:Firstly, captions can influence Chinese EFL university students’ vocabularyacquisition. Their English vocabulary meaning can be better improved by the L1captions than by the L2captions and their English vocabulary spelling can be betterhelped by the L2captions than by the L1captions.Secondly, watching captioned videos with tasks can better improve the ChineseEFL university students’ vocabulary acquisition than watching it without tasks. The L1or L2captioned videos with the task of reading comprehension are morebeneficial to their English vocabulary meaning than that with the task of blank fillingwith reading comprehension and the L1or the L2captioned videos with the task ofblank filling with reading comprehension are more effective for their Englishvocabulary spelling than that with the task of reading comprehension.So in education, teachers can design different captioned video with differenttasks to improve the Chinese university EFL students’ English vocabularyacquisition according to their teaching goals.