The Impact of Watching Captioned TV Series on Vocabulary Development of EFL Students

Abstract

Second language development could be achieved through various teaching and learning processes; however, applying multimedia technology has facilitated this process. This study aimed at examining the effect of captioned TV series on developing vocabulary knowledge of EFL students. There were forty intermediate male students learning English in Shokouh institute of Nowshahr, Mazandaran, Iran. The classes were held two sessions a week. The participants were randomly selected into control and experimental groups. Before the experiment, a 20-item vocabulary matching test was conducted as the pre-test. The vocabularies including in this test were chosen from a TV series in order to investigate their knowledge of vocabulary. After the pre-test ‘Friends’, An American TV series, was shown to both groups. English captioned episode was shown to the experimental group and non-captioned episode to the control one. After that, a post-test was conducted to examine the development in each group. Both independent and paired t-tests were carried out. The results of this study revealed that the participants in experimental outperformed those in control group in terms of their vocabulary development. The findings may be shared with other teachers in order to inform how captions affect the vocabulary learning of Iranian EFL students.