The effects of English, Arabic, and no subtitles on Arabic ESL learners’ listening comprehension

Many studies have shown that English videos subtitled in English are more beneficial to ESL/EFL learners than English videos subtitled in the learners’ native language. However, no such studies have looked at native Arabic speakers, nor have any looked at effects on learning. Therefore, this study looks at the effects of different subtitle types on the listening comprehension of ESL native speakers of Arabic. Specifically, the study examines the immediate effects (experiment 1) and short-term/learning effects (experiment 2) of three types of subtitling on listening comprehension: bimodal subtitling (English dialogue with English subtitles), standard subtitling (English dialogue with Arabic subtitles), and English dialogue with no subtitles. In experiment 1, 35 intermediate, advanced, and high-advanced ESL with Arabic L1 watched a short video in one of the three subtitling conditions and then completed a multiple-choice comprehension test. The bimodal (English) subtitles group scored better than the standard (Arabic) subtitles and no subtitles groups. In experiment 2, the same 35 participants watched an unsubtitled pretest video, 15 short videos, all in one of the same three subtitling conditions used in experiment 1 (randomly assigned), and then an unsubtitled posttest video, spread across 4 weeks. Following each video, all participants completed the same multiple-choice comprehension test. The bimodal (English) subtitles group showed greater improvement than standard (Arabic) subtitles and no subtitles groups.