Subtitling practice as a task for motivation enhancement and oral comprehension improvement in the acquisition of english as a second language and its viability in a learning unit
This research studies the effects of subtitling practice as a task to improve oral comprehension and enhance students´ motivation. The task is included in a learning unit specifically designed for secondary students in the Spanish education system to find out their preferences and to test the feasibility of the integration of the task as a regular activity in language learning. Subtitling brings into the classroom the motivational component of ICTs, multimedia, and the use of authentic materials while it simulates real-life tasks in the classroom and promotes active and autonomous learning. Listening in second language teaching is a skill which has been neglected over the years and is still not dealt with in a motivating way in the classroom. Besides, there is great amount of research carried out on the effects of watching captioned videos in the acquisition of language skills, but the area of subtitle production as an effective educational tool is still unexplored. The findings show a tendency among students to consider subtitling the most motivating activity. The integration of subtitling in a learning unit intends to cater for all students´ needs and learning styles and to keep a balance among the treatment of all the skills. The outcome of the study enhances the need for further research to find conclusive results on the improvement of oral comprehension, gives clues for the improvement of the learning unit and provides suggestions for further research on the effective use of subtitling practice as an educational tool
