18 www.eslmag.com
Introduction
In recent years, English language teachers
have begun to use movies in their classes
at different levels. But they have to decide
whether they should show a film with or
without subtitles and in what language.
They also need to think about in what way
will the presentation benefit their students
most in relation to listening comprehension.
Richards and Gordon (2004) maintain that the
employment of video enables learners to use
visualinformationtoenhancecomprehension.
It allows learners to observe the gestures,
facial expressions and other aspects of body
language that accompany speech. It presents
authentic language as well as cultural
information about speakers of English.
Although a widespread view on audio
comprehension held that both target-language
captions and native-language subtitles
were anathema to developing listening
comprehension (Robin, 2007), a group of
studies focusing exclusively on L2 subtitling
has looked at its effects on comprehension,
language recall and retention (Kikuchi; King;
Weyer; Ryan,; Meskill; Kothari, Pandey, and
Chudgar). Until recently, however, the use of
films in teaching English has been downplayed
becauseteachersfelttheyweretime-consuming
and too difficult to tackle. Yet with the spread
of video equipment and audiovisual resources
into educational institutions, the use of films
is becoming more common (Canning-Wilson;
Secules, Herron & Tomessello; Balatova).
In my own experience of teaching listening to
Persian learners of English, I found on several
occasions that motivation in communicating
with the content of the film in general and the
idea of listening in particular was encouraged.
In one class, the learners even asked if they
could take some subtitled movies to watch at
home so that they could keep in touch with the
atmosphere of learning English. I remember
one student who said it was quite difficult
for him to understand all the words, phrases,
and sentences uttered by the characters of the
film. He continued, "I would like to get what
the characters mean by what they say. More
Captioning Comprehension:
Using Movies in the ESL Classroom
Teachers face a dilemma when choosing a movie to show to their English language learning
students: L2 subtitled movies? L1 subtitled movies? Or movies without subtitles? Majid
Hayati examines the choices and explains which type of presentation will be of most aid to
listening comprehension.
Watching subtitled
movies requires
a fair mastery
of reading. It
develops both fast
reading and recall
and retention
of the structure
especially if used
with other skills
such as speaking
and writing.

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