RRS

A Thesis
entitled
The Effects of Captioned video on Learning English Idiomatic
Expressions among ESL Learners in the advance Level
by
Asieh Jahanyfard
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment for
The Master of Arts Degree in English
__________________________________________
Dr. Douglas W. Coleman, Committee Chair
__________________________________________
Dr. Alexander Wrege, Committee Member
__________________________________________
Dr. Gaby Semaan, Committee Member
__________________________________________
Dr. Patricia R. Komuniecki, Dean
College of Graduate Studies
The University of Toledo
December 2015
Copyright © 2015, Asieh Jahanyfard
This document is copyrighted material. Under copyright law, no parts of this document
may be reproduced without the expressed permission of the author.

An Abstract of
The Effects of Captioned video on Learning English Idiomatic

Expressions among ESL Learners in the advance Level
By
Asieh Jahanyfard
Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for

The Master of Arts Degree in English
The University of Toledo

December 2015
These day teachers try to find the best ways for teaching English to their students.
They use variety of materials to improve their students’ skills. Videos play important
roles in providing interesting learning environment for the students. In addition, after
using the videos in the classes to teach English, many researchers attempt to find more
effective ways to bring videos into the classroom. The research shows that if videos
include some text; they will provide a better input for students to learn better. Captioning
is the one of the ways that can improve the use of videos. This study researches the
effects of captions in learning language and checks the correctness of the Noticing
Hypothesis of Schmidt. In total, 19 participants in the advanced level of ALI (American
Language Institute) in the University of Toledo were involved in this study. The
participants was divided to three groups the control group (watched the video without
subtitles), experimental group 1 (watched video with regular subtitles) and experimental
group 2(watched the video with subtitles that include some highlighted vocabulary
items). The results show that the students in the experimental group 1 and 2 got the
higher score in the tests. Thus, captions could help the students to learn more. In addition,
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the experimental group 2, got the highest scores, it means that highlighted captions cause
more learning. In addition, the results of study did not support Schmidt’s idea. The
learning did not have correlation with noticing in this study. The students learned some
items that they did not noticing to them.
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Acknowledgments
First of all, I appreciate my advisor, Dr. Douglas Coleman, for his help, advice,
and patience throughout this research. I appreciate his vast knowledge in the area and his
assistance in all levels of my research. Second, I would like to thank my committee
members, Dr. Alexander Wrege, a true friend, and Dr. Gaby Semaan, for valuable
discussions and their guidance.
This thesis would not have been possible without the continuous love, support,
and encouragement I received from my family, especially my Mom who always supports
me. Even though my family are not living close to me, I always feel them in my heart.
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Table of Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iii
Akenowlegment ...................................................................................................................v
Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi
List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii
List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix
1 Introduction .....................................................................................................................11
1.1 Using Videos in English calsses .......................................................................... 11
1.2 Caption videos and leaerning English .................................................................. 14
1.2.1 Idimis ........................................................................................................... 20
1.3 Noticing Hypothesis ...............................................................................................22
1.3.1 Noticing..........................................................................................................24
1.3.2 Intake and noticing ..........................................................................................24
1.4 Noticing and Caption video .....................................................................................28
2 Methods...........................................................................................................................30
2.1 Participants ..............................................................................................................30
2.2 Materials ..................................................................................................................31
2.2.1 Video ..............................................................................................................31
2.2.2 Comprehension test........................................................................................34
2.2.3 Interview questions ........................................................................................35
2.3 Procedure.................................................................................................................36
3 Results .............................................................................................................................39
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4 Discussion .......................................................................................................................48
4.1 Limitation and Suggestions for Further Research...................................................52
References ..........................................................................................................................54
Appendix A ........................................................................................................................58
Appendix B ........................................................................................................................62
vii
List of Tables
3.1 Results of ANOVA test of total gain scores of groups……………………………...40
3.2 Results of comparing average between highlighted (H) items that were remembered
in the control and plain captions groups and non-highlighted (NH) items that were
remembered in the control and plain captions groups by t-test…………….……………42
3.3 the results of ANOVA test of numbers of highlighted items that students
remember………………………………………………………………………………...43
3.5 The contingency tables of correlation between remembered or did not
remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………45
remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………45
remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………45
remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………46
remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………46
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List of Figures
2.1: The screen shot of the video with regular subtitle………………………….33
2.1: The screen shot of the video with highlighted subtitle……………………..33
2.3: Two examples of question in the tests………………………………..…….34
3.1: An example of test items used in the post-test for checking “noticing”...….44
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Chapter 1
1. Introduction
1.1 Using Videos in English Classes
Since the time that technology allowed, teachers have used videos in their classes
to teach second languages to their students. Teachers use different kinds of media and
videos to teach different skills in English. Videos are good sources of input because
students can see the characters and situations; also videos are interesting and they
increase students’ motivation (Chang, Lei, & Tseny, 2011). In addition, videos expose
students with “real communication” as well as the cultural context. When students watch
a video, this provides the opportunity for them to be familiar with behaviors of the native
English speakers in the different situations, besides, helping them to be more acquainted
with the culture of native people (Chang, Tseng, & Tseng, 2011). This could prevent
cross-cultural problems, when learners travel to the foreign countries. According to a
study done by Isamili ( 2014), “Teachers claimed that movies can enhance the interaction
among students in class and provide students with more opportunities to use English.”
The majority of instructors prefer to use short videos in their classes instead of long
videos because they are more accessible and easier to fit within the limited time of
classes. In addition, they can focus on specific tasks or situations, and they can be made
for the English classes’ purposes (Chang, Tseng, & Tseng, 2011).
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Many scholars have studied the effects of using videos in English classes and
they concluded that videos can provide a good environment for students to improve their
English skills. According to Murphy and Hastingd (2006), Shahani, et al., (2014)
Williams (2014), and Ismaili (2014), videos can facilitate the learning of English. Results
of the research show that students appreciate using videos in classes, and they believe
videos are interesting and useful tools (Williams, 2014; Ismaili, 2014). According to
McNulty and Lazarevic (2012) “the quality of being able to hear and see synchronous
communication, communicators’ gestures, gazes, paralinguistic cues, facial expression,
and lip movements are very important.” These factors reinforce understanding and
learning. On the other hand, videos can be used individually as self-study materials
(Meskill, 1996). Generally, videos could help students to improve their skills by
providing different kinds of input for them.
As Krashen (1983) mentions, students need to receive comprehensible input in
order to learn language. Thus, students need to have good language skills like listening to
use comprehensible input effectively. Long (1983) has reviewed the studies in which
comprehensible input was not available during acquisition; in their cases acquisition was
delayed. For example, children of deaf parents who can hear have a delay because they
have a lack of comprehensible input. However, they could improve and reach to the level
of other children after receiving comprehensible input from others like their friends and
their teachers. Therefore, receiving comprehensible input plays an important role in
improving learners’ skills. They need to understand the input; listening skills are essential
skills in getting the message of speakers. Adults spend more than 40 percent of their
communication time in listening, in contrast with 31.9 percent speaking, 15 percent
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reading, and 11 percent writing (Rankin, 1926/1952), thus listening can be an effective
tool in increasing the knowledge of a person.
Combinations of visual and auditory aids are more satisfying for listening
comprehension than auditory stimuli alone (Liang, 2013). Teachers have paid attention to
the use of videos in their classes as material in improving the listening comprehension of
their students for a long time. Videos are used as perfect materials in teaching listening
skills because videos can be made to provide the chosen situations and can be matched
with the level of students in the classes. There is research that focuses on the effects of
watching videos in improving listening skills (Li, 2012; Meskill, 1996; Chang, Lei, &
Tseny, 2011; Thanajaro, 2000 and Liang, 2013). The results of the majority of these
studies show that videos can play important roles in improving the listening skills of ESL
learners. Generally, researchers choose different aspects to study influences of videos in
listening comprehension such as the length of the videos, how many times a video is
watched, whether a video contains authentic or simplified listening materials. Thus, the
effects of videos in developing listening skills have been proven by many studies.
Learning vocabulary plays important roles in learning new languages because
vocabulary is the foundation of any language. The one way that student can enrich their
vocabulary’ knowledge is learning the new vocabulary in context. When learners
encounter a context like a whole reading or even just some paragraphs, they can learn
better and they do not forget words easily. Although books give written input to students,
other tools and materials that could provide aural input could give better opportunities for
students to learn vocabulary. According to Wang (2012), “we remember images better
than words; hence we remember words better if they are strongly associated with
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images.” Results of plenty of studies by Chun and Plass, (1996), Akbulut (2007), Hall
and Dougherty (2012), and Lin and Tseng (2012) conclude that videos are practical
sources in learning vocabulary because they provide images and other input for students
to understand the meaning of words much easier.
The theory of learning vocabulary by watching media is based on a generative
theory of multimedia learning (Chang, Lei, & Tseny, 2011). This theory divides all input
into two different classes, first verbal input and second non-verbal input. Next, it claims
that new information can cause our brain to connect input with the old information and
experiences in our brain. According to Lin and Tseng (2012), “when the content of
learning is well controlled (intrinsic cognitive load) and the presentation is properly
designed (extraneous cognitive load), effective learning is likely to take a place (germane
cognitive load).” Therefore, learning cannot happen effectively when the presentation of
new vocabulary is not designed properly. On the other hand, when students watch videos,
it is more interesting and motivating for them, in comparison to learning just by using
text. Motivation is one of the factors that can increase learning quality and speed.
Moreover, based on the students’ ideas the plots, the events and emotion of actors help
the students to learn new vocabulary (Wang, 2012).
1.2. Captioned Videos and Learning English
Many studies concentrate on additions to videos that will make them more
effective. These studies are based on previous work such as Between-Channel
Redundancy (BCR) theory (Hartman, 1961). This theory discusses the enhancement of
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comprehension because of the existence of multiple channels (at least two channels:
audio and visual). According to Hartman (1961), redundant information is the same as
uniting of information that is presented by two or more sources at the same time, for
example, captions and dialogue. He explains redundancy has four levels including
redundant, related, unrelated, and contradictory. When information is contradictory or
unrelated, the channels compete with one another for attention, so interference is
produced. On the other hand, when information is redundant or related, the channels
complement one another to improve learning (Hanson, 1992). When learners received the
input through two channel (print, audio) their learning is more effective that when they
just presented by one channel alone (Hartman, 1961; Hsia, 1971). Multiple-channel input
provides an environment for the learners to reduce their error, their information loss, and
increase the rate of recall information; this because learners receive the information
through two channels (Hsia & Jester, 1968). Generally, audio and video channels are
used in television or videos. When watchers see a situation and hear the dialogues related
to that at the same time in television or videos, the visual images could be pictures,
captions and subtitles that provide additional input, which aids watchers to learn better.
The other benefit of captions is lowering the cognitive load, based on the
Cognitive Load Theory. (A load upon working memory that are produced when a specific
task is processed in the cognitive system is called cognitive load.) When students watch
video/media, pictures and images can help them to reduce their level of cognitive load;
when cognitive load is at a higher level it will interfere with learning processes (Sweller,
Van Merriënboer, & Paas, 1998). As Sweller, et al., (1998) mentions, according to
Cognitive Load Theory, the capacity of our working memory is limited in comparison to
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the unlimited capacity of our long term memory. Thus, anything that can decrease the
cognitive load in our minds can help us. Therefore, students who received the image and
text (double mode) had lower cognitive load in comparison to the students that received
single mode input (Chang, Tseng, & Tseng, 2011).
These days, popularity and availability of films and videos in the field of EFL has
increased and using captions as an addition to them become widely welcomed. Captions
activate multi-sensory processing that involve audio, video, and print components all at
the same time (Hwang & Huang, 1999). Subtitle text is performance text, and they show
what is spoken in the videos. They more resemble oral communication than wittem forms
(Hwang & Huang, 1999). They play an important role in teaching foreign languages
because they provide the environment for students to listen to the native speakers and
give chances to them to integrate written and aural information.
Improving listening skills is one of the goals of ESL/EFL learners. Thus, captions
can help students to develop these skills by providing different kinds of input through
different channels for them. Plenty of researchers pay attention to the effects of captions
in learning listening skills. The majority of studies on the effects of captions focus on L2
captions in improving L2. One of the studies that focuses on the effects of caption in
listening was done by Winks, Gass, & Sydorenko (2010). Their study involved 150
university students in the U.S with different L1s like Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and etc.
The subjects watched a series of three 3-5 minute English language documentaries twice
(once with captions, and the other time without captions. After watching the videos twice,
the students answered two tests, a content comprehension test and a vocabulary test. The
results of the tests show that captions, as an additional source of input, help the students
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to get higher scores on both tests. They found that even the order of watching the
captioned video could affects the scores of the students. The experimental group, which
watched the captioned video, first (and after that watched the non-caption video) had
higher scores on both tests, in comparison to the group that watched the captioned video
second.
Captioning is not just popular in learning English, but is used as effective tool in
learning other languages as well. Usually videos that are used in foreign language classes
include the target language. However, when students watch movies/videos, they prefer to
watch them with subtitles in L1 not with subtitles in L2. Thus, instructors try to
encourage the students to use subtitles in L2 to improve their L2 skills, especially
listening. Although the subtitles in L2 are more effective, subtitles in L1 still can help
students to increase their listening skills. When students listen to the L2 audio and look at
the subtitles in L1, it can be useful because they can understand the video better; this
method is more practical for the students in the basic or intermediate level in L2. The
students that watch captioned videos in L1 even have better results in the listening
comprehension test (Markham & Peter, 2002). A study by Markham and Peter (2002)
investigated the effects of using captions with different languages in Spanish dialogue
videos. A group of university students (intermediate) who learn Spanish as a foreign
language participated in this study (n=213). They consisted of three groups, including
watchers of an English captioned video, watchers of a Spanish captioned video and
watchers of a non-captioned video. The video was seven minutes, and gave information
about the Apollo 13 NASA space exploration mission. The subjects answered 20
multiple-choice questions in listening comprehension test. The results of this study
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support the previous results reveal that the captioned video group achieved higher scores
in the listening test. It should be noted that the experimental group that viewed a video
with English captions had higher scores in comparison to the other groups (Markham &
Peter, 2002). Chang, Tseng, & Tseng (2011) also investigated the effects of captions on
listening comprehension. The results of their study indicated that learners who were
presented with dual-channel video (with caption, include videos and texts) had higher
scores in the listening comprehension test.
The meaning of words has a close relationship with the content of a video. Thus,
captioning is one of the factors that can help students; they view the whole content of
video while they listen and read the captions (Markham & Peter, 2002). According to
Klein (1986) “Suppose you were locked in a room and were continually exposed to the
sound of Chinese coming from a loudspeaker; however long the experiment continued,
you would not end up speaking Chinese.” Video can provide “parallel” input to students;
they can see gestures, body language, facial expressions, noise, and picture of
background and environment in which the conversation happens. This can aid students to
understand or guess the meaning of new words easier. In addition, when students
discover the meaning of words by seeing and hearing them, it will assist them to recall
them easier. In addition, word boundaries do not exist in the speech signal; it is hard for
students to recognize some words in speech like have, are, has, is, etc. When students
read captions, it will help them to understand better because they can see complete words,
which they could not recognize in speech. Captioning provides not only redundant but
also additional information about word boundaries to the students.
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Although captions could be helpful, the significant improvement in learning
happens when learners know how to take advantages of useful strategies and use captions
properly. Since students do not have much experience in using captions; it would be more
effective if they learn some strategies and techniques which will help them to use
captions practically. It is useful for students to learn cognitive and metacognitive
strategies to make predictions with the help of visual clues and their background
knowledge, to rely on the words that they know or are familiar with, to know how to
watch videos, decide on what to listen to and how many times listen to it, and to choosing
the right strategy when listening to different videos (Thompson & Rubin, 1996).
“Captions can lead to significant improvement in learners’ listening comprehension as
long as they are taught to take advantage of relevant strategies” (Winks, Gass, &
Sydorenko, 2010). The other factors that need to be considered while using captions are
learnersʼ proficiency and their educational and cutural background. The level of difficulty
of captions should be matched with the level of proficiency of students. If the difficulty
level of captions is lower or higher than the studentsʼ level, it may cause disadvantages
instead of giving learning opportunities to them. When instuctors choose captions videos
for classes, they need to pay attention to the background (the cultural and linguistic
background) of their students and try to find the suitable materials. Although instructors
should keep these points in mind, sometimes they cannot find the perfect match for the
needs of their students. Still they could at least try to find the best possible option to be
used in their classes.
Some recent research on the effects of captioning was done by Harji, Woods and
Alavi (2010). Their participants (92 EFL learners) were divided into two groups who
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watched three episodes of captioned Connect with English. The control group watched it
without caption and the experimental group watched with captions. Researchers used a
Michigan English Test, Content-Specific Test and a questionnaire to examine the
subjects’ content comprehension, vocabulary acquisition and language proficiency
development. The results of their study showed that watching captioned video can affect
vocabulary acquisition and language proficiency, because the experimental group had
higher scores on tests. As I mentioned before, captions as a source of a bimodal input can
assist students to enrich their vocabulary knowledge. For example, research that was done
by Williams (2002) shows the benefits of captioning as a bimodal source. In their study,
the subjects were divided into three groups; in each group vocabulary was presented in a
different form: text with sound, text without sound, sound without text. They measured
the improvements in spoken word, recognition efficiency and recognition memory.
Results of the study showed that the experimental group, who were presented with text
and sound gained higher scores on the tests. Numerous studies have focused on the
effectiveness of captions in learning vocabulary, and the majority of them come to the
point that captioning is a useful tool in developing vocabulary knowledge for students
like Yuksel & Tanriverdi (2002).
1.2. 1 Idioms
The majority of EFL learners usually are not highly proficient enough to use
idioms in their communication in L2. Most course books in L2 (especially English) do
not present enough idioms, so students do not have opportunities to see or learn idioms in
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L2. Native speakers of each language use a lot of idioms and slang in their daily
conversation. Thus, EFL learners need to know at least popular idioms/slang in the target
language to be able to communicate with native speakers better and understand them
easier. Although every day informal slang/idioms are not used in the academic field a lot,
students may not see the written form of them in their course. Students are exposed to
them while the lectures of instructors and during speaking with other native speakers.
Thus, knowing slang/idioms can help students in understanding speech. It happened to
me a lot that my professor used slang/idioms in classes to explain something or giving
example for clarifying some topics in classes. Imagine your professor says something in a
class and ever body laughs except the international students. After learning more
slang/idioms in English, it helped me to communicate better and easier with my native
speaker friends. When considering teaching and learning slang/idioms. We should pay
attention to the cultural references of them too. Language and culture are related to each
other, and learning other languages always comes with knowing about a new culture.
When students learn a new language, they will be familiar with the culture that surrounds
the language. One of the problems that EFL/ESL students face in learning slang/idioms is
the lake of input of idioms and slangs in the target languages. Captions can fill this gap
for students, because it provides opportunities for students to see (written form) and hear
idioms/slang in an authentic context (Ketabi & Sadeghi, 2013). The factor which makes
idioms unique in comparison to the other words is their meaning. Their meaning is not
related to their denotation (reference) like other words. Meanings of idioms come from
their connotation (affect) and context that surrounded them. Although, idioms used in
speech a lot, it is hard for ESL/EFL students to get the meaning of them through speech.
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When students can see the text and idioms in the same time, receiving more input can
help them to get the meaning of idioms. Thus, captioning is a good tool that can help
them. Therefore, idioms are good candidates for testing the effect of captions because
students can use text to get the meaning of idioms alongside the other input like facial
expressions, the environment, etc.
1.3. Noticing Hypothesis
Schmidt (1983), argues in order for learning to happen, students must notice what
they are being taught; thus they need to consciously attend to it. Even if language
learning is not the focus of the activity, language learning may still occur (Schmidt,
2010). Schmidt called this learning by intention “incidental” (as opposed to the
acquisition of Krashen’s sense). On the other hand, when students use language in class
for conversion with attention to the forms and structure, it is “intentional” learning,
according to Schmidt. He believes that intentional learning is essential for improving
fluency: for learning some aspects and forms of language and input, learners need to fully
notice them. He says “noticing is the necessary and sufficient condition for converting
input into intake” (Schmidt, 1993).
It should be noted that motivation behind his idea is the results of his studies that
argue learning cannot occur through unconsciousness processes. Schmidt mentions his
own learning of Portuguese during five month that he spent in Brazil as one of the
support for his hypothesis (Schmidt & Frota, 1986). He took Portuguese classes for five
weeks, and he developed his language learning by interaction and communication with
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native speakers. He claims that this shows that although participating in the class was
useful, frequency of input in the communication was more important. Therefore, when he
compared his notes from Portuguese classes with his monthly tape-recording (they
showed his developing in production and his interaction in L2). “They found that some
forms that were frequent in input were still not acquired until they were consciously
noticed in the input.” (Schmidt & Frota, 1986) In addition, he believed that although
native speakers usually corrected his grammatical errors in conversation, it could not be
effective because most of the time he was not aware of it. As a result, he concluded that
learning happens only when learners attend to input consciously.
In SLA there is controversy about the role of consciousness and unconscious
processes in learning. There are different ideas about it, such as learning without
conscious, learning consciously and advocators of mixture of these two ideas. The
Noticing Hypothesis of Schmidt, focus on effects of noticing in learning. According to
Schmidt (1990) noticing is a necessary and sufficient factor for turning input into intake.
It should be noted that his hypothesis like any other hypotheses has advocators and
opponents.
Schmidt describes three different types of consciousness in language learning:
consciousness as awareness, consciousness as intention, and consciousness as knowledge.
In addition, he divides consciousness as awareness into three levels including perception,
noticing, and understanding (Schmidt, 1995). Attention and awareness at the level of
noticing, he says, are different sides of the same coin (Schmidt, 1995). Since the
“noticing” part of his hypothesis is related to my study I will explain it.
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1.3.1Noticing
As I mentioned before, perception and noticing are two different things.
According to Schmidt (1993), noticing plays an important role in learning languages, but
perception is not as important as noticing in learning. The phenomenon of “blind-sight” is
the best example for distinction between them According to Bowers & Meichenbaum
(1984) bind-sight is
“In which patients with damage to the visual cortex are able to discriminate
between visual stimuli at above chance levels, but have no awareness of seeing
anything at all, suggesting that different parts of the brain are responsible for the
detection of stimuli and for consciousness of them.”
Thus, perception and noticing happen in the different parts of brain. Schmidt (1990)
says that consciousness plays an important role in learning language. First, he claims,
learners must notice consciously, or “exhibit a conscious awareness of a specific form in
the input, before they process it.” As stated by Schmidt (1990, 1993) in order for
subsequent second language development to occur, noticing (conscious attention) the
form of the input is necessary.
1.3.2. Intake and Noticing
The concept of intake is a critical concept in SLA, but there is not any clear
definition for it. Krashen considers comprehensible input as intake. Corder (1967) says
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“input is what goes in, not what is available for going in, and we may reasonably suppose
that it is the learner who controls this input, or more properly his intake.” Slobin (1985)
suggests that we have preliminary intake in which speech input is converted to stored
data and this data can be used for building language. In addition, there is final intake,
which includes processes which organize stored data into linguistic systems.
In the Noticing Hypothesis, Schmidt focuses on preliminary intake, and he says
intake is a part of the input that learners notice (Schmidt, 1990). Results of Schmidt’s
study let him to believe shows that presence and frequency in input are not the only
factors that affect the use of some specific items in speech. For example, in some studies
although subjects received some input a lot, they do not use them in their speech. He
concluded that, subjects used forms they received in their speech was not the number of
times that they heard them, but what input they noticed. When they heard something that
caught their attention, they used it in their speech and they could remember it better
(Schmidt, 1990). According to Schmidt and Frota (1986), there is “close connection
between noticing and emergence in production.” Schmidt claims although that attention
is necessary for information to be stored in short term memory in the information
processing model, but unattended information can enter to the short terms memory.”
Nevertheless, if this unattended information is not selectively attended to and noticed, it
cannot enter into long term memory. According to Schmidt (1990) noticing is a
necessary and sufficient factor for turning input to the intake. Schmidt (1993) claims that
“a further extension of the Noticing Hypothesis is that what must be attended to and
noticed is not just the input in a global sense but whatever features of the input are
relevant for the target system.” Thus, he concluded that noticing plays an important role
25
in learning, and that this noticing must be a specific part of input processing. Schmidt
discusses some evidence that support his hypothesis; they include evidence from
psychology, applied linguistic and implicit learning (1995, 1993).
Schmidt and Frota (1986) reported that the most grammatical structures that were
noticed in conversational interaction belonged to the grammatical structures that students
learned in a formal language class. They suggested that one of the functions of instruction
is to increase the salience of forms in subsequent input. Sometimes, he concluded,
students learned some grammatical rules that they had not taught in class, because they
caught the learner’s attention during interaction. Slimani (1987) argues that, learners
learn parts of input that catch their attention and that while teachers may try to teach
some things, students learn the parts that they notice.
In spite of fact that Schmidt believes that learning happen through just
consciousness processes, he cannot convincingly prove his idea. He strongly claims that
learning without noticing will not happen; however, many other studies have produced
results showing that learning happens both in consciousness and unconsciousness
processes. Humans have two different systems to store information: declarative memory
and nondeclarative (procedural) memory) (Purves, et al., 2004). According to Purves, et
al. (2004) “Declarative memory is the storage (and retrieval) of material that is available
to consciousness and can be expressed by language” like the ability to remember a song
or a cell phone number. Nondeclartive memory “involves skills and associations that are,
by and large, acquired and retrieved at an unconscious level” for example; remembering
how to dial a cell phone. It is difficult or even impossible to explain how we do these
kinds of things, because we do not have consciousness memory during doing these
26
things. “ Thinking about such activities may actually inhibit to perform them efficiently
(thinking about exactly how to stroke a tennis ball or swing a golf club often makes
matters worse)” (Purves, et al., 2004). Learning and memory are connected to each other.
When we want to learn something new like language we are using both of these memory
systems and both of conscious and unconscious for instants, when students learn syntax
(arrangement of words in the phrases and sentences) in the new language, they do not pay
attention to learning syntax because learning syntax belongs to implicit learning
“knowledge that is acquired without conscious effort to learn, without awareness that
learning has occurred, and without the ability to describe the acquired information”
(Reber, 1993; Truscott, 1998). Thus, students learn syntax without awareness or noticing
it but instead by unconsciousness learning. When children start to learn language, they do
not notice or attend to grammatical rules consciously; they just learn language by
listening and imitating their parents. Children look at language as a whole and learn it;
they do not try to learn it piece by piece. The other weak point of Schmidt’s Noticing
Hypothesis is that he did not clearly define attention and he did not explain the
relationship between attention, and consciousness. Schmidt’s claim that learning does not
happen through unconscious, does not have a lot of advocators. However, many scholars
do accept that noticing can help students to learn better and more noticing can cause more
success.
27
1.5. Noticing and Captioned Videos
Numerous studies in the field of SLA have concentrated on using captions
investigating the effects of it on improving and developing foreign language, especially
English skills and learning vocabulary. In the most of their research the subjects are
divided into two groups (one group watches captioned video and the other one watches a
video without captions). The results of most of these studies show that captions can help
students to improve their language. The focus of my research besides checking the
effectiveness of captioned and uncaptioned videos is to determine whether highlighted
captions can help students to learn better or not. There are not many studies related to the
effects of highlighted idioms/phrases in captions. However, captions are a useful tool in
learning language, and possible reading captions that include some highlighted items can
help students as well. Because it can provide more input for them, they can use the
benefits of receiving color and shape input beside the auditory and visual input. On the
other hand, there are quite a few of studies that have focused on the Noticing Hypothesis
of Schmidt. The central attention in the most of these studies was the Noticing
Hypothesis in regards to learning grammar. Researchers usually have investigated the
learning of grammar such as learning verb tenses. The majority of them focused on
attention to the “ed” or “s” at the end of verbs. Most of these studies have experimented
just or written forms of L2 and have not usually used any materials like videos or movies.
Although captioning and the Noticing Hypothesis are popular topics in SLA fields, there
are not a lot of studies that try to connect these to each other. Thus, my focus in this study
is on linking noticing and captioned video. To be more specific, I choose to investigate
28
the learning of the idioms/phrases, not grammatical forms or words. I want to know
whether watching captioned videos that include some highlighted idioms/phrases can
affect the learning of theses idioms/phrases or not.
Although I should consider the fact that even if students have better results with
highlighted caption, it does not mean that the noticing Hypothesis is correct. In order to
support the noticing hypothesis, students need to attend to the highlighted idioms/phrases
consciously.
29
Chapter 2
2. Method
2.1 Participants
This study took place in the American Language Institute (ALI) of the University
of Toledo in the state of Ohio. The students who take classes in this institute are
international students or are spouses of international employees. The reason international
students come to this institute is that they want to apply to the university, but could not
get the required score on the TOFEL exam. Most need to improve their English skills to
get suitable TOFEL scores to enter the university. The spouses of employees usually
come to these classes to improve their daily English skills and learn how to communicate
with native speakers. Students are from different parts of world, mostly from the Middle
East (countries like Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Kuwait, etc.), but also from countries in Asia
(like China or Korea) and European countries (like Spain or France). Participants in my
study are 19 students in three classes. They are at the advanced level in the ALI. They are
including 19 in the range of 20 to 40 ages. Their first languages are Arabic, Chinese and
Japanese.
30
2.2 Materials
2.2.1. Video
The video that students watched is an interview between David Letterman and
Tom Cruise (Puntata, 2012). I chose this video because both Cruise and Letterman spoke
clearly and their accents are close to Standard English. Thus, the international students
can understand them better. The other reason that I chose this video based on my teaching
experiences in the ALI. While teaching there, I discovered that the majority of students
know Tom Cruise and are familiar with his movies (Cruise is one of the most popular
actor among the students), so I think that they will like to know more about him. They
will pay attention to the video because they are interested in the topic of it. During the
video, Letterman asks some general questions about Cruise’s family, and his new movie.
Cruise gives some personal information about his son and the activities that his son and
he like to do with each other. Cruise also answers some questions about his new movie
“Jack Reacher”; he shares some information about the plot of movie and the origin of the
story. The video does not cause any kind of cross-cultural problems_ it does not have any
kinds of inappropriate sentences or behaviors that could harm students.
Because of limits on available time some parts of the video were cut; the original
video was around 15 minutes. The investigator kept the parts that included useful
idioms/phrases (the idioms/phrases that were used in the pre-test _see below). The video
included some fade in and fade out techniques for helping the students to realize that the
video was not complete and some parts of it were cut. These techniques were used to
prevent confusion, and help the students to follow the plot of the video more easily. After
31
cutting the unnecessary parts of the video, the total time of the video was reduced to five
minutes. After reducing the time of the video to five minutes, a transcript of it was
written. Three native speakers of English checked the transcript to be sure that it matched
with the dialog of the video. After finalizing the transcript, it was added to the video as
subtitles (captions). Once regular subtitles were added to the video to create a second
version, some idioms/phrases were highlighted to create a third version of the video. The
highlighted words in the subtitle are the idioms/phrases that relate to questions in the pre-
test and post-test, for example, “Correct me if I am wrong”. In all, I thus have three
versions of the same video the original (edited) video without subtitles, the video with
regular subtitles (Figure 2.1) and the video with highlighted subtitles (figure 2.2). The
number of highlighted idioms/phrases is the same as the number of pre-test/post-test
questions, 11 questions on the tests and 11 idioms/phrases the video. It should be noted
that some idioms/phrases are repeated in the video more than once.
32
Figure 2.1 The screen shot of the video with regular subtitle.
Figure 2.2 The screen shot of the video with highlighted subtitle.
33
2.2.2 Comprehension Test
The comprehension test was administered both as a pre-test and as a post-test.
However, the post-test had an extra item to test conscious noticing of vocabulary. The
comprehension test included eleven multiple choice questions to test understanding of the
idioms/phrases. The students needed to choose the appropriate meaning from four
available options based on the information in the video. Two examples are shown in
figure 2.3.
1. John says, "I don't know why Bob quit his job. Correct me if I'm
wrong: the place he works now is a small company and pays a much lower
salary”
When John says, "correct me if I am wrong," John means:
a. "I think I'm right about this."
b. "I think he should not do it."
c. "I think I am I'm wrong about this."
2. John says, “ Let’s just say, he wants to travel around the world on a bike: He
does not have any money to do it “
When John says, “Let’s just say” John means:
a.“To be honest,”
b.“I wish that”
c.“Hypothetically,”
Figure 2.3 Two examples of question in the tests
In these examples “correct me if I am wrong” and “Let’s just say” are phrases that
the students may learn the meaning of from the video. All eleven questions in the pre-test
include the same kind of phrase. The whole test can be seen in, Appendix A. The
questions on the tests do not repeat the situation in the video, but use new scenarios in
34
order to test for comprehension rather than rote memory. Thus, each question has a
different scenario with a chosen idiom/phrase in it. The reason for choosing these
idioms/phrases is that students need to understand the meaning of them through the
content of the video, because these words do not have simple meaning. Thus, they are
good candidates to be tested. As mentioned before, the post-test had an extra question. In
that question students were asked to identify phrase/words that they noticed in the video.
The question was (Which of these words/phrases did you hear/see in the video?” The list
of words/phrases included “snowboard,” “correct me if I’m wrong,” “don’t kid yourself,”
etc.
2.2.3. Interview Questions
Interview questions started with general questions about a student’s native
language and their interest in watching different kinds of videos. The reason for asking
their native language was to be able to compare students with different native languages.
Questions about their preference for different kinds of videos were like “Do you like to
watch news in English? How often do you watch news in English?” etc. Participants
were asked about news, weather, sports, action stories, comedies, drama, horror and
family movies. The reason for this question is to know the kind of movies or series that
students like and watch more. The forth question was “Why do you like to watch things
in English?” I wanted to know their reason for watching things in English; fun,
entertainment or to learn English. The fifth question is “Did you watch things in English
in your country?”The purpose of this question was to discover their watching habits in
35
their own countries. The next questions were “Do you prefer to watch things in English
with subtitles or without subtitles? ” and “ (Only when they said yes to the previous
question) Do you prefer to watch things in English with subtitles in [the name of their
native language]or with subtitles in English?” In addition, participants spoke about their
habits in watching things in English, like pausing a video to read subtitles or watching
videos with their mother language subtitles or with English subtitles. In addition, they
answered some questions about their perception of the effects of watching videos, such as
“Does watching things with English subtitles help you to improve your English skills?
Which ones?” and “Does watching things with English subtitles help you to understand
U.S culture more?” The answer to these questions showed their habits in watching video,
which could be used as extra information in the results of study. It should be noted that
not all the questions were asked of all the students; they may just answer half of
questions. This depended on their answers to other questions. For example if they
answered to the “Do you prefer to watch things in English with subtitles or without
subtitles?” “without subtitle” they did not need to answer the rest of the questions, about
subtitles. The total time of each interview was 20 minutes, but this time was different
from person to person based on their answers. The whole set of interview questions can
be seen in Appendix B.
2.3. Procedure
Participants in the study were divided into three groups from three classes. The
study took place in the regular classroom of the students, and their teachers were in the
36
classroom too. The times of three classes were different and the teachers were different in
each class too. The researcher distributed the consent forms to the students. After
explaining the concept of form to the students and answering their questions about it,
students who agreed to participate in the study signed the consent form. When the
students who did not agree to participate in the study left the classroom, the rest of
students answered the pre-test. They had 15 minutes to answer 11 multiple choice
questions (they marked their answers in the pre-test paper; they did not receive any
separate answer sheet). The students did not lose points for wrong answers, in this way;
they were not under stress of choosing the wrong answers. While the students were
answering the questions, their general questions that were not related to the
idioms/phrases were answered.
After collecting the pre-tests, the students watched a five minute video. There
were three groups the control group, experimental group 1, experimental group 2. All the
students in the three classes watched the same video except that the control group
watched it without subtitles, experimental group 1 watched it with regular subtitles and
experimental group 2 watched it with subtitles with some highlighted items. The students
in the all three groups watched the video twice, so they spent around 10 minutes in
watching the video. It should be noted that the students had a short break between the
first and second time of watching the video (about five minutes). Next, they retook the
comprehension test as a post-test. They had 15 minutes to answer the questions (a longer
time because of the added “noticing” items on the post-test) and, like previous time,
wrote their answer on the questions sheets. After around 50 minutes the study finished
and the students left the classes. The names of students were recorded in a data key, each
37
student’s name was associated with a number. This was done so that data from tests could
later be associated with interview data. After that, the data key was destroyed so that tests
and interview data was anonymous. The collected data was kept in the locker of
investigator’s office in the Field House, third floor, office number 2940.
After one or two days the interviews were held in a small private conference room
the University of Toledo in Field House. The volunteers for the interviews were 10
students from three different groups: 5 from the control group, 4 from experimental
group1, and 1 from experimental group 2. The students answered the questions while
their voice was recorded. They did not need to write any things; they just answered the
questions orally. The total time of each interview was around 20 minutes, but it was
different from person to person based on their answers. The interviews were done
individually, and the investigator tried to explain clearly the meaning of the questions
because if the students did not understand the questions, it would affect the accuracy of
their answers. The students were free to discontinue it whenever they wanted. The
investigator tried to provide a friendly and relaxed environment for interviewees to
reduce their stress because some of students were not completely comfortable to being
interviewed. Next, the investigator transcribed the voice recording, and the voice
recording data was destroyed. The raw data was kept in the office of the students
investigator.
38
Chapter 3
3. Result
After collecting data from three advanced classes in the ALI, data was analyzed
with R-Commander software. The pre-test and post-test answers were recoded into R-
commander, there was one variable for each question on each of the tests were created for
example, pre1 (question 1) of the pre-test with responses entered as “a”, “b” or “c” for
each students. Each variable was recoded into new variable (for example,CORpre1). If
the answer was “a” it will equal to 1 (“a”=1), because the correct answer for question one
of the pre-test was “a” and if the answer was incorrect, it was recoded as 0 (“b”: “c”=0).
Thus, the factors in the raw data were recoded to numbers for easier analyzing. The total
score for correct questions in the pre-test and post-test for each person was calculated in
R-Commander, as two new variables. After that the gain score from the whole data set
was calculated (total posttest-total pretest=total gain scores).
Based on my hypothesis, the control group should get a lower gain score, the
group that saw captions with highlights should get the highest score and the regular
caption group should get a gain score in the middle. There is because the captioned video
should help the students to answer more questions correctly even and highlighted items in
the caption with highlighted should aid the students to answer more question correctly, in
comparison to the control group that did not see any captions. In order to decided whether
39
to use ANOVA or Kruskall Walkis for analyzing the data, a Shapiro-Wilk test was done
to check whether the data came from a normal distribution or not? The total gain scores
(gain scores of all participants in three groups) was used in analyzing the normality of
data. The result of test showed W = 0.89358, p-value = 0.2939 , thus the data have a
normal distribution p˂0.05 means the data is significantly different from a normal
distribution. After confirming that data coming from normal distribution, ANOVA was
used to analyze the gain score in these three groups. The result of ANOVA comparing
the gain scores of the these groups showed no significant difference (mean c=2.28571,
mean x1=0.45871, mean x2=0.88432, F= 3.94, d.f.=2, p=0.0731).
The reason for these results could be because of bias toward that too many
students (even in the control group) knew the answer of some questions even before
watching the video. Thus, the data was adjusted; the questions that the control group was
answered correctly in the pre-test were eliminated because they have already known the
answers even before watching the video. In total, five questions (items) were eliminated
from 11 total questions. After that, the adjusted data were reanalyzed by ANOVA. As
you can see in table 3.1, captions with highlight group has a highest mean (1.1428), after
that plain caption group with means of 0.7142 and lowest mean belongs to the control
group (-1.400) (d.f.=2, F=7.024, P=0.00646).
Table 3.1 Results of ANOVA test of total gain scores of groups.
Mean SD N
Control group -1.4000000 2.1908902 5
Plain caption group 0.7142845 0.4879500 7
Caption with highlight 1.1428571 0.6900659 7
40
The results show that watching captioned video help students to learn language
better because the scores in the caption with highlight and plain caption groups are higher
than those of the control group that watched the video without any kind of subtitles. In
addition, the results indicate that the captions with highlight group got higher score than
the plain caption group. It means that the highlighted captions could help students more
in learning and understanding language than regular captions.
Schmidt believes that conscious noticing can cause learning. Schmidt’ followers
could interpret this result to mean that “noticing” helps because they assume that
highlighting causes conscious “noticing”. However, if a participant "noticed" an item in
Schmidt's sense (consciously), then they should be able to report remembering it .Thus,
the second element that was checked in this study was of idioms/phrases that the students
remembered at the end of the study. Recall that as part of the post-test they remembered
(last question of the post-test, Appendix A). Vocabulary items (chosen phrase/idioms that
were tested in the last question of post-test) in this last section can be divided into two
categories (9 of each): (1) items that were highlighted in the video that contained
highlights and (2) items that were not highlighted in the video that contained highlights.
Thus, the control group just heard these idioms/phrases, the plain caption group heard
them and saw them in the subtitles, and the caption with highlight group heard them and
saw them highlighted in the subtitles.
A variable in the data set show the total number of items that students remember
from test, this variable was divided into two different variables that included:
remembering highlighted items (H), and remembering non-highlighted items (NH). Next
41
these two variables were divided up to distinguish there two variables by group, so that
each group could be checked separately to see whether highlighted idioms/phrase can
cause more remembering by any group of the students.
A t-test compared the remembered H items in captions with highlight group with
remembered NH items in the caption with highlight group; the results are shown in Table
3.3. The results, indicate that highlighting made a difference: the caption with highlighted
group scored higher on highlighted items (mean=13.000, s.d.=2.51) than on the non-
highlighted ones (mean=12.25, s.d.=2.14), (t=3.873, d.f.=6, p=0.008237). Thus, watching
captions with highlighted items not only helped students to learn more than the students
in other groups; in addition, the results show that the caption with highlight group who
watched captions with highlighted items could learn more highlighted items because they
of the highlighting items.
Table 3.2 t-test compared the remembered H items in the captions with highlight
group with remembered NH items in the captions with highlight group.
Mean sd t df p-value
Remembering
highlighted in
13.00000 2.516611
caption with
highlight
group
3.873 6 0.008237
Remembering
non-
highlighted in 12.28571 2.138090
caption with
highlight
group
ANOVA was used to compare the number of highlighted items that
students in the three different groups remembered. The result reveal that caption with
42
highlighted group remember more items (mean =13.00) in comparison to other groups.
The control group means is 7.8000 and the plain captions group mean is 9.5714 (Table
3.4). It show that even though the plain captions group did not see the highlighted items;
they are better than the control group because they still saw the items in the written form
in subtitles, while the control group just hear them. Thus, receiving more input (visually
and auditory) could help to remember more items or noticing more items.
Table 3.3 the results of ANOVA test of numbers of highlighted items that
students remember.
Mean sd n
7.8000000 2.489980 5
The control group
The plain captions 9.571429 1.902379 7
group
The captions with 13.000000 2.516611 7
highlighted group
The adjusted data was used for Fishers ʼ exact test. The information was
entered manually. In order to use Fisher’s exact test, the number of correct answers for
each question was made for example, the number of correct answers on a pre-test
question was compared with the answer of the correct answer post-test question. If
students did not answer the question correctly in the pre-test, but answered it correctly in
the post-test, it was meaning interpreted means they learned the right answer to question
after watching the video. However, if the students did not answer the pre-test correctly
and they did not answer the post-test question correctly, this was interpreted as it
meaning that the video did not help them to learn .Likewise, if a student got an item
correct on the pre-test, then no learning occurred. Thus, the total number of students that
learned each item (items: 2,3,4,8,9,11) and did not learn each items was calculated
43
separately. In the next step, it was checked to see that if the students learned an item, did
they remember it or not? Remember that Schmidt says that noticing is necessary for
learning. If a student remembers seeing a vocabulary item, it was not mean they
“noticed” it, in Schmidt’s sense. See figure 3.1 for an example test items used in this
analysis.
“3. Tom says, “My computer is really old, I cannot use it a lot, It is behind the
curve”
When Tom says, “My computer is behind the curve” Tom means:
a.“My computer broken”
b.“My computer use a lot of electricity”
c.“My computer is out of date””
Figure 3.1 an example of test items used in the post-test for checking “noticing”.
Based on the above question, a student learned “behind the curve”, because he/she
answered it correctly in the post-test, but incorrectly on the pre-test. When the students
learn an item, it was checked to see that he/she circled the items (behind the curve) in the
last question of post-test (Appendix A). If it was circled that means he/she remembered
this item. At the end, the total numbers of students that learned each item, the total
number of students that learned or did not learn each items was cross tabulated with the
total number of students that remembered or did not remember that item. As mentioned
44
before, Fishers ʼ exact test was used to check the correlation. The contingency tables of
each item could be seen in follow (Table 3.4 -3.9).
Table 3.4 The contingency tables of correlation between remembered or did not
remember item 2.
Not remembered
Item 2 Remembered items P-value
items
Learned items 5 1
Non learned 0.2424
2 3
items
remember item 3.
Not remembered
items
Learned items 3 0
Non learned 0.4285
2 2
items
remember item 4.
Not remembered
items
Learned items 3 0
Non learned 0.25
0 1
items
remember item 8.
Not remembered
items
Learned items 1 0
Non learned 0.2
0 4
items
45
remember item 9.
Not remembered
items
Learned
3 1
items
1
Non learned
3 1
items
remember item 11.
Not remembered
items
Learned items 0 0
Non learned 1
3 1
items
As Tables 3.4-3.9 shows p-value of all items are higher than 0.05, lowest p-value
is 0.24. Thus, we can conclude that there is not any correlation between learning and
remembering items. This means that changes in the number of items that were learned do
not have any relationship with items that were “noticed”. For example; if you learned any
of these six items, it does not mean that you remember them. There were cases in which
the students do not learn the items but they still remembered them and cases in which the
students learned the items but did not remember them.
The reason for the higher number of remembering in the highlighted and plain
captions group could be that they were exposed to the items more items than the control
group. To check this, a t-test was used. I looked the items that there were in the tests: the
students in the experimental groups saw them in the questions and in captions. I looked at
46
how well the two experimental groups remembered those items compared to items that
were not in the tests (and those were seen only in captions). The mean of first group is
7.473684 an the mean of second group is 3.210526, it shows that the students remember
more items that they saw them in the test and captions (t=9.1845, d.f.=18, p=3.252e-08). I
believe this is why the students in the control group that just heard the items and did not
have a chance to see them and also were exposed to those items fewer times got the
lowest mean on the ANOVA. Therefore, seeing the items more times (obviously) helped
the students to remember more items.
The conclusion of analyzing data show that watching caption video helped
students to learn better, especially when they watched the captions with highlight. In
addition, watching highlighted captions assisted students to remember more items in the
post-test, because they remembered more highlighted items than non-highlighted items.
The last thing that results indicate is that there is not any relationship between learning
and remembering the items; this is evidence against Schmidt claim that for learning you
must notice consciously. Some students learned an item but they did not remember it, so
they did not essentially need to notice an item consciously to learn it.
47
Chapter 4
4.1 Discussion
The results of this study clearly support the idea of the usefulness of captioned
video especially when highlighted is addaed. In addition, there may be a motivational
benefits. All the students (10 students) who were intervewed mentioned that they use
captioned vidoes/movies for improving their English skills. They said that English
subtitles always help them to understand the content of videos/movies much better. They
usually watch different kind of movies with English subtitles. Some of them enjoy the
American soap operas a lot, and they believe watching them without subtitles may be
boring for them because they cannot understand all the dialoges based on their listening
skills. Thus, the students favor captioned videos a lot and they look at it as a learning
tools as well as for entertainment.
The results of study support the effectiveness of captioned videos because the
plain caption video group mean (in the gain scores of tests) was higher than the control
group mean based on the ANOVA. Both the control group and the plain caption group
watched the same video, and they watched it twice. The only differnces between theses
two groups was captioning. During the interview all the students in the control group
mentioned that they watch captioned movies a lot. Thus, the reason for the lower score of
the control group were not related to any unfamilirity with captions. It should be noted
48
that the vocabulary items (idioms/phrases) do not have simple one- word form. Their
meaning is not related to their denotation (reference). Meanings of idioms come from
their connotation (affect) and context that surrounded them. Thus, the students need to
receive enough input from context to understand the meaning of them.
The video itself (what is common to all three forms) contributes the sound of
speech, the environmental sounds, and the view of the environment. The visual
information that we receive from our environment with our eyes goes to our visual cortex
(in cerebral cortex), which is responsible for processing visual information. On the other
hand, the auditory information that we receive from environment and other people around
us is sent to the auditory cortex (in temporal lope). Moreover, the auditory input and
visual input proceed to different parts of our brain and go through separate channels to
get to that part of our brains. The captioned video adds text, which the viewer receives in
parallel to the speech – it contains almost the same information as the speech, but the text
is processed through different brain centers than the speech. Thus, the text adds more
neural connections, but not significantly more information, mostly just more redundancy.
The additional processing of text is largely through the visual center that processes
shapes. The captioned video with colored highlights likewise does not add significantly
more information than either of the other video forms, but does activate additional parts
of the brain (those that process the color of text) and thus may strengthen signals along
certain neural pathways. Color and shape are processed in different parts of brain. Both of
them are analyzed in the inferior temporal cortex, but in the different part of it (Lafer-
Sousa & Conway, 2013). Color also adds to the perceptual salience of parts of the text
(which the results above show is not the same as conscious “noticing”).
49
In addition, the highlighted caption group scored higher than other two groups.
This means that highlighted captions (while highlighted just chosen idioms/phrases)
could help the students significantly to gain higher score in the tests. The reason for this
difference could be that highlighting helped the students to get the more input in
comparison to other groups (they received visual, auditory, text and color). They received
the extra input (color input) so receiving one more input in comparison to other groups
aided the students to gain higher sores. Students in the control group received the
auditory and visual input, the students in the plain caption group received the shape of the
text input as well, and the students in the highlighted caption group received the color
input; the different amount of input are likely a reason that the scores in the each group
are different (lowest in control group and highest in the highlighted caption group).
Based on the t-test results, the highlighted caption group remembered the most
vocabulary items (the items that were chosen to be tested), because they saw the
highlighting vocabulary, remembering more vocabulary items (noticing them) does not
by itself mean that they learn more because of noticing. Remember that there were cases
in which students learned some items, but did not remember them. The reason for this
higher number of remembering in the caption with highlighted group appear to be that
highlighted items were more salient to the students in that group/ or because they saw
them more times. Schmidt believes that in order for learning to happen students should
notice the vocabulary items. However, the results of the Fishers’ Exact test disapprove
his idea; there was not any correlation between remembering the vocabulary items
(noticing them) and learning them. When the students remembered more items,
essentially, they did not learn more. As you can see in the previous chapter, sometimes
50
students learn items that they did not even remember them, sometimes the students did
not learn the items, but they remembered it. The results contradict the Noticing
Hypothesis because remembering did not cause learning.
Schmidt insists that learning without noticing cannot happen, but the results of
this study show that noticing is not essential for learning vocabulary items (Reber, 1993;
Truscott, 1998; Purves, et al., 2004). As long as the students notice the input it could help
them to learn more, but there is not any support here that shows not noticing can hinder
learning. The results show the other factors like the number and kind of inputs and the
number of times that the input occurs play important roles in learning.
The other problem that Noticing Hypotheis has is that Schmidt believes that
learning happens only through consciousness processes. However, humans have two
different systems to store information: declarative memory and nondeclarative
(procedural) memory (Purves, et al., 2004). When students learn new things, they use
their both memories. When we want to learn something new like language, we are using
both kinds of these memories _both conscious and unconscious_ processes. We use each
of these types’ of memories to learn new and different kinds of things. When children
start to learn language, they do not notice or pay attention to the grammatical rules
consciously; they just learn language by listening and imitating their parents. Children
look at language as a whole and learn it; they do not try to learn it piece by piece.
51
4.2 Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research
One limitation is the number of participants; they were only 19. For collecting
the data from more classes, more time is needed. Another factor that might have affected
results is that the participants having different native languages. If the pre-test included
the part that asks the students about their native languages, this information could be used
in categorizing the students by their native languages. In addition, I was forced to exclude
some of my data because the control group knew the answer of some questions even
before watching the video. In addition, there were not equal numbers of females and
males in the study (the participants were mostly men). Because the students in the ALI
are mostly men, if the data was collected from more classes, it could help to have more
female participants. Moreover, the participants were not equal in terms of time that they
were in the U.S, thus the amount of interaction with native English speakers also varied
among them. Adding a question that related to the number of months/years that the
students had spent in the U.S could solve this problem. The other element is the video
like the level of video, the quality of video, and the content of video. These factors can
affect the results, like maybe the video was too hard for some students. Maybe, choosing
video from a commercial publisher of ESL materials that are graded by level could help
me to find a more suitable video.
There are other potential problems. First, the phrases that students needed to learn
their meaning are difficult, which might affect their understanding. Second, students just
heard or see the phrases twice. This could also make it easier to give breadth of
association. To learn better, students need to be exposed to the phrases more times and in
different contexts. Third, the meanings of the phrases are not simply referential; the
52
phrases are like idioms and it is not easy to understand them, especially for international
students that still cannot enter to the university because their English proficiency is not
strong enough. It might be better if the phrases were easier and simpler. A good option
for better videos could be to use some short videos on cooking or sports.
53
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57
Appendix A
Appendix A includes the comprehension test that was used as pre-test and post-test.
. John says, "I don't know why Bob quit his job. Correct me if I'm wrong: the place he
works now is a small company and pays a much lower salary."
When John says, "correct me if I am wrong," John means:
a. "I think I'm right about this."

b. "I think he should not do it."
c. "I think I am I'm wrong about this."
2. John says, “ Let’s just say, he wants to travel around the world on a bike: He does not
have any money to do it “
When John says, “Let’s just say” John means:
a.“To be honest,”
b.“I wish that”
c.“Hypothetically,”
3. Tom says, “My computer is really old, I cannot use it a lot, It is behind the curve”
When Tom says, “My computer is behind the curve” Tom means:
a.“My computer broken”
b.“My computer use a lot of electricity”
c.“My computer is out of date”
4. Matt says, “When I was a child, I punished because I used dirty words”
When Matt says, “ used dirty words” Matt means:
a. “Used not clean words”
b. “Used impolite words”
58
c. “Used informal words”
5. Leon says,” You cannot use dirty words like ‘F’ word in the class, because It is not
polite” When Leon says, “‘F’” Leon means:
a.” Fun”
b.”Fool”
c.” Fuck”
6. Teacher says, “If you use ‘B’ word in the class again, you will need to bring your
parent to school”
When teacher says, “ ‘B’” teacher means:
a. “Bad”
b. “Beast”
c. “Bitch”
7. Fred says, “You cannot use ‘S’ word in the formal speaking with your boss”
When Fred says, “’S’ “Fred means:
a.”Stupid”
b. “Shit”
c. “Stare”
8. Barbara says, “I loved snowboarding a lot, I like to be waist deep in powder”
When Barbara says, “waist deep in powder” Barbara means:
a. “In a lot of powder”
b. “Surrounded by a lot of snow”
c. “ Eat a lot of sugar”
9. Jack says, “My grandfather is living in the village, he do not know how to use the
modern technology. His house does not have electricity; he is an analog person in digital
age”
When he says, “He is an analog person in digital age,” Jack means:
a. “He is an old person”

59
b. “He loved to use digital technology”
c. “He does not use digital technology”
10. Amir says, “I hate to fight with people, I prefer to speak instead of fighting, but
sometimes I have to dish out some problems”
When Amir says, “dish out problems” Amir means:
a. “Give out some problems”
b. “Ignore some problems”
c. “Take out some problems”
11. Sara says, “I hear my friend came back to the city after ten years, but I cannot find her.
She is like the wind: blows into town and blows out of town.”
When Sara says, “She is like the wind: blows into town and blows out of town” Sara
means:
a.”She travels a lot”
b. “She has to leave the town to avoid the police”
c. “She is not a reliable person”
12. Which of these words/phrases did you hear/see in the video? Circle them.
a. snowboard
b. correct me if I’m wrong
c. don’t kid yourself
d. Throw the ball
e. let ʼs go outside
f. hypothetically
g. behind the curve
60
h. fourth grade
i. that’s crazy
j. dirty words
k. kind of crap
l. waist deep
m. ‘b’ word
n. get in to a fight
o. analog character
p. no driver’s license
q. dish out
r. blow into town
61
Appendix B
Appendix B includes the interview questions.
Interview Questions
1. What is your native language?
2. Do you like to watch ………. in English? How often do you watch………… in
English?
a. News b. Weather c. Sports d. action stories e. Comedies
f. Drama g. Horror H. Family movie
a. Everyday b. twice a week c. More than five times a week
d. Never e. Hardly ever f. Less than once a month
4. Why do you like to watch things in English?
5. Did you watch things in English in your country?
6. Do you prefer to watch things in English with subtitles or without subtitles?
7. (Only when say yes to 6) Do you prefer to watch things in English with subtitles in
…….or with subtitles in English?
8. (Only when say yes to 6) When you are watching things in English with subtitles, do
you pause them to reread the subtitle? How often? Why?
9. (Only when say yes to 6) Does watching things with English subtitles help you to
improve your English skills? Which one?
10. (Only when say yes to 6) Does watching things with English subtitles help you to
understand the US culture more?
62

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A Thesis

The Effects of Captioned video on Learning English Idiomatic

Expressions among ESL Learners in the advance Level

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty as partial fulfillment for

The Master of Arts Degree in English

Dr. Douglas W. Coleman, Committee Chair

Dr. Alexander Wrege, Committee Member

Dr. Gaby Semaan, Committee Member

Dr. Patricia R. Komuniecki, Dean

College of Graduate Studies

The University of Toledo

may be reproduced without the expressed permission of the author.

The Effects of Captioned video on Learning English Idiomatic

Submitted as partial fulfillment of the requirements for

The University of Toledo

Hypothesis of Schmidt. In total, 19 participants in the advanced level of ALI (American

items that they did not noticing to them.

assistance in all levels of my research. Second, I would like to thank my committee

discussions and their guidance.

Abstract ............................................................................................................................. iii

Table of Contents ............................................................................................................... vi

List of Tables ................................................................................................................... viii

List of Figures .................................................................................................................... ix

1.1 Using Videos in English calsses .......................................................................... 11

1.2 Caption videos and leaerning English .................................................................. 14

1.2.1 Idimis ........................................................................................................... 20

1.3 Noticing Hypothesis ...............................................................................................22

1.3.2 Intake and noticing ..........................................................................................24

1.4 Noticing and Caption video .....................................................................................28

2.1 Participants ..............................................................................................................30

2.2 Materials ..................................................................................................................31

2.2.1 Video ..............................................................................................................31

2.2.2 Comprehension test........................................................................................34

2.2.3 Interview questions ........................................................................................35

4.1 Limitation and Suggestions for Further Research...................................................52

3.1 Results of ANOVA test of total gain scores of groups……………………………...40

remembered in the control and plain captions groups by t-test…………….……………42

3.5 The contingency tables of correlation between remembered or did not

remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………45

3.6 The contingency tables of correlation between remembered or did not

remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………45

3.7 The contingency tables of correlation between remembered or did not

remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………45

3.8 The contingency tables of correlation between remembered or did not

remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………46

3.9 The contingency tables of correlation between remembered or did not

remember item 2…………………………………………………………………………46

2.1: The screen shot of the video with regular subtitle………………………….33

2.1: The screen shot of the video with highlighted subtitle……………………..33

2.3: Two examples of question in the tests………………………………..…….34

1.1 Using Videos in English Classes

cross-cultural problems, when learners travel to the foreign countries. According to a

communication, communicators’ gestures, gazes, paralinguistic cues, facial expression,

providing different kinds of input for them.

As Krashen (1983) mentions, students need to receive comprehensible input in

their teachers. Therefore, receiving comprehensible input plays an important role in

communication time in listening, in contrast with 31.9 percent speaking, 15 percent

tool in increasing the knowledge of a person.

learners. Generally, researchers choose different aspects to study influences of videos in

Learning vocabulary plays important roles in learning new languages because