A Review of Research on the Educational Use of English
Captioned Materials in Japan

Toshikazu KIKUCHI
Numazu National College of Technology
e-mail kikuchi@la.numazu-ct.ac.jp

Edited from the original

Studies in Japan

The studies listed below were conducted in ordinary schools for hearing students in Japan.

In this paper I will briefly introduce 37 studies and articles published in Japan in chronological order since 1988.

<1988>
(1)Kimura, Hiroyuki.
(2)A Lesson with an English Captioned Movie.
(3)Audio Visual Center Newsletter,Vol.10, Kinki Univ. pp.24-34
(4) Japanese
(5) An English captioned movie, Top Gun, was divided into five segments by appropriate time and scenes. Japanese university students (n=87) watched each segment and took a dictation test. The author concluded that an English captioned movie motivated students to learn English.

<1989>
(1) Kimura, Hiroyuki.
(2) A Lesson with an English captioned Movie.
(3) Audio Visual Center Newsletter, Vol.11, Kinki Univ. pp.11-23
(4) Japanese
(5) An English captioned movie, The Untouchables, was used. Students wrote down the difference between real utterances and captions. The author concluded that an English captioned movie could bridge the gap between reading skills and listening skills.

<1990>
(1) Mori, Tsuyoshi., Isobe, Tetsuya., Sakamoto, Kishio., Miyamoto, Setsuko.
(2) A Report of the Class for an Educational Videotape and a Closed-Captioned Movie Videotape.
(3) Research Annual, No.25. Aichi Univ. of Technology. pp. 23-32
(4) Japanese
(5) The authors examined how Japanese university students (n=41) responded to an educational video and a movie. Also examined how Japanese university students (n=36) responded to a movie with different language captions: Japanese and English. Students wrote down missing words in English captions with the help of Japanese subtitles. Authors concluded that use of movies improved students' motivation to learn English.

<1990> (1) Satoh, Hiroaki.
(2) The Application of Closed Captioned Laserdiscs to a Database.
(3) Senshu Language Laboratory Bulletin, No.19. Senshu Univ. pp.93-105
(4) Japanese
(5) The author analyzed the captions of 26 English captioned movies. The author concluded that movies are good materials to teach authentic English.

<1991>
(1) Miyamoto, Setsuko.
(2) The Classroom Use of Movies with English Captions and its Teaching Outcome: A Preliminary Report.
(3) Nagoya Gakuin University Round Table on Languages, Linguistics and Literature, No.22. Nagoya Gakuin University. pp. 21-32
(4) Japanese
(5) Effects of English captioned movies on reading and listening comprehension. Three groups: (1)group with Japanese subtitles (n=48), (2)group with English captions (n=88), (3)group without exposure to a movie but practice fast reading (n=38). Reading and listening comprehension scores of the pre- and post tests were compared with a six month-interval. Groups (1) and (2) scored higher in post-tests compared to pre-tests in listening ,and groups (2) and (3) scored higher in post-tests than in pre-tests in reading. Subjects had difficulty focusing on any one of communication channels, because they received sound, motion pictures, and captions at the same time.

<1991>
(1) Satoh, Hiroaki.
(2) Word Frequencies in Closed-Captioned Movies.
(3) Senshu Language Laboratory Bulletin, No.20. Senshu Univ. pp. 99-111
(4) Japanese
(5) The author analyzed the captions of 146 English captioned movies. The total number of the words analyzed was 1,133,668. The author examined the relationship between taboo words and the MPAA Rating.

<1993> (1) Hirose, Keiko., Kamei, Setsuko.
(2) Effects of English Captions In Relation to Learner Proficiency Level and Type of Information.
(3) Language Laboratory, No.30
(4) English
(5) This study focused on 3 research questions: 1.Do all learners benefit from English captions? 2.What are the effects of English captions relative to the learners' proficiency level? 3.What are the effects of English captions relative to the type of information? A total of 275 Japanese non-English major college students were divided into six groups based on the scores of a standardized English proficiency test. A film-viewing test was made using an American movie with or without English captions. All learners, regardless of their English proficiency levels, benefited from English captions. Even with the help of captions, learner understanding was proportional to their language proficiency level, and it was difficult to expect all learners to be able to read and understand English captions in a limited time. Found that the English captions facilitated learner understanding through linguistic information, while not affecting the understanding of emotions or feelings. Longitudinal study is needed to investigate the effects of using captions on English learning.

<1993>
(1) Obari, Hiroyuki., Kubota, Akira., Lander, John.
(2) The Effect of Closed-Captioned Video on Listening Comprehension.
(3) Studies in Foreign Language Teaching, No.15. Tsukuba Univ. Foreign Language Center.
(4) Japanese.
(5) Japanese university students (n=122) were divided into two groups by their majors. Students watched a video titled Adventure in 2000 words with or without English captions. The listening comprehension scores of the pre- and post tests were statistically compared over the course of several weeks' teaching. Their conclusion was that the use of closed captioned video improved overall listening comprehension, admitting some shortcomings in the experiment.

<1994>
(1) Akashi, Yuko.
(2) Some Studies on How to Utilize Television in Second Language Teaching.
(3) The Report, Vol.14. Tokai Univ. Foreign Language Center. pp.37-46
(4) English
(5) The purpose of this paper was to review the literature on how to utilize television with or without captions. The author focused on the potential of English captioned television in the EFL classrooms in Japan citing following researchers' article; Huffman D. (1986), Markham P. (1989), Mehler A. (1988). The author also discussed several new possibilities for taking advantage of television for in schools and as well as at home, and stressed self-sufficiency as a means of language learning.

<1994>
(1) Kamei, Setsuko.
(2) The Role of Pictures in Comprehension of Functions.
(3) The Research Annual, Vol.8, Kanto-Koshinetsu English Language Education Society. pp.65-74
(4) Japanese
(5) Do pictures have a beneficial effect equally on all learners? What is the most effective media combination at different proficiency levels? A Function Test consisting of 40 multiple choice questions was made, using an American movie. 271 students were divided into 4 groups: sound, motion picture, sound and motion picture, sound, motion picture, and captions. Results showed lower proficiency group benefited more from motion pictures than the higher proficiency group. Adding captions to the situation of sound and motion picture did not always help higher English proficiency learners process information, whereas it helped lower English proficiency learners obtain information from the movie.

<1994>
(1)Kamei, Setsuko., Hirose, Keiko.
(2) Multimedia Effects on L2 Comprehension in Relation to English Learner Proficiency Level
(3) Language Laboratory, Vol.31, pp.1-17
(4) Japanese
(5) Four presentations were compared using an American movie: English sound only(S), English sound with motion pictures(SP), English captions with motion pictures(PC), and English sound and captions with motion pictures(SPC). 464 Japanese college students of three English proficiency levels were tested on comprehension while and after watching (or listening) the same six excerpts from the same movie. Results showed that in any proficiency group, students exposed to PC and SPC gained the highest scores, and that the addition of sound to PC did not make any significant differences in their comprehension. Findings suggested that the students exposed to SPC were perhaps reading captions and rarely listened, and that captions plus motion pictures have positive effects on learner comprehension. Results of comparisons between the three groups implied that each group seemed to have different strategies for processing multimedia information.

<1994> (1) Ogasawara, Shinji.
(2) Effectiveness of Using English Captioned Videos on Listening Comprehension Proficiency.
(3) Bulletin of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Nagasaki Univ., Humanities, Vol.35, No.1, pp.103-114
(4) English
(5) There were two aims: 1. to measure whether videos with English captions are effective teaching materials in comparison with videos without captions; 2. to measure whether fully captioned videos are more effective than partially captioned ones. Analyzed the students' evaluation sheets and got feedback on the interest, usefulness and difficulty of the video. Results suggested that fully captioned videos were much more effective than partially captioned or non-captioned videos if they were used over the long term such as at least one semester.

<1994>
(1) Satoh, Hiroaki.
(2) An Effective Use of English Captions as a Database.
(3) The English Teachers' Magazine, Vol.42, No.13, Taishukan, pp. 20-22
(4) Japanese
(5) The author introduces a database developed by him, and discussed how to use it in relation to improving listening comprehension.

<1994>
(1) Satoh, Hiroaki.
(2) Movie as an authentic material.
(3) Modern English Teaching, Vol.30, No.12, Kenkyusha, pp. 20-22
(4) Japanese
(5) The author focused on the usage of an English word, "freeze", in relation to a Japanese student's accident in the United States. The author also introduced some other English expressions from the database.

<1994>
(1) Tsuchiya, Takehisa.
(2) An Effective Use of English Captioned Video.
(3) The English Teachers' Magazine, Vol.42, No.14, Taishukan, pp.42-44
(4) Japanese
(5) Japanese university students (n=55) were divided into two groups: Group A (motion pictures + sound + captions) and Group B (motion pictures + sound). Students watched one segment from an American video, and took a multiple-choice test on the content of the segment. Result was that there was almost no difference between the two groups. Concluded that adding English captions to the treatment of sound and motion pictures was not so effective than expected initially.

<1994>
(1) Suzuki, Noriko.
(2) Educational Value of English Captioned Movie
(3) The Research of Toyo Women's Junior College, Vol.26, 71-84
(4) Japanese
(5) Japanese college students (n=70) were divided into two groups according to the group treatment: a control group (sound + motion pictures + captions) and an experimental group (sound + motion pictures). Each group was divided further into two groups by English proficiency levels, high and low. Using a movie, The Sound of Music, the author examined students' overall understanding of the movie through True or False Questions, Note-taking, and Cloze-test. The results were that the group with captions obtained higher scores compared to the other group. The author concluded that a captioned movie had educational value to use in the EFL classroom, and that such a movie improved overall listening comprehension. The author pointed out that teachers should consider when to present captions.

<1994>
(1) Ikeda, Sophia.
(2) Using Captions Increases Comprehension.
(3) The Japan Association to Language Teachers Journal, Vol.16, No.1, pp. 83-89
(4) English
(5) English majors at a college (n=70). They were randomly divided into two groups. A movie was divided into 19 segments by scenes. Each group met nine times. For the first five periods, Group A was exposed to captions but Group B was not. For the next four periods, Group A watched video segments without captions while Group B watched them with captions. Two types of questions. To answer A-type questions, the subjects needed to understand what was being said. For B-type questions, the answers could be found visually. Results -- significant differences among A-type questions whereas no significant differences between groups were found with respect to the B-type questions. Author understood that reading the captions helped subjects' comprehension ability, and that the captions did not have an effect on acquiring non-verbal information.