Animated Film as a Linguistic Tool: Enhancing EFL Vocabulary Learning Through Subtitles and Glossing

Abstract

This study aims to explore the impact of entertaining audiovisual material in the form of a full-length animated film on the acquisition of incidental vocabulary by Saudi EFL learners. The study utilized the animated movie Zootopia as the audiovisual input for the treatment in three learning conditions: no subtitles (NST), subtitles (ST), and glossed keywords subtitles (GKST); on 127 EFL female participants from a Saudi university. The sample was divided into two sub-samples, each with three groups corresponding to the three learning conditions. Incidental vocabulary learning gains were measured using four tests: meaning recognition, form recognition, meaning recall, and form recall, at three time periods using pre-post-delayed-posttest design. The results showed that groups who watched the animated movie with subtitles and glossed keywords outperformed the no subtitle group in all tests; however, glossed keywords provided a significant improvement to the participants’ receptive knowledge of word-meaning, along with providing word retention gains in in all tests. The study findings may imply that the wide availability of audiovisual resources could be used as an effective linguistic input for EFL learners in class for the purposes of vocabulary learning.