Investigating the Utilization of Subtitles on EFL Learners’ Spoken Production

Abstract

This study investigated the utilization of subtitles on EFL learner’s spoken production. Sixty three EFL learners from University of Kanjuruhan Malang, Indonesia were willing to take part in this research activity. They were grouped into beginner (N=30), intermediate (N=24), and advanced levels (N=9) based on their equivalent paper-based TOEFL test. Those participants were randomly assigned into three groups: Group 1 was exposed to videos with L2 subtitles, Group 2 was exposed to videos with L1 subtitles, and Group 3 was exposed to videos with L0 or without subtitles. Each group constituted 21 participants from different levels, beginner (N=10), intermediate (N=8), and advanced (N=3). After eight weeks of treatments they were assigned to watch “Upside Down†English video and promptly gave comment by answering six questions pertaining to the video they had seen. A Two-Way Factorial ANOVA was applied to analyze the data obtained from the recorded comments. The result showed that there was significant difference performance among all groups L2, L1, and L0 subtitles across all levels of English proficiency. Despite the fact that the use of L2 subtitles outperformed L1 and L0, however, interaction effect between subtitles and levels was only found between L2 and L0. The higher the level of English proficiency the less need to use subtitles. Therefore, EFL learners should notice this to brush up their spoken English and EFL teachers have to consider learners’ English proficiency level when they use subtitles as supplementary teaching media.