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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 25, No. 0, pp.538-561
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2025
Received 02 Jan 2025 Revised 08 Mar 2025 Accepted 29 Mar 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.25..202504.538

영상 시청에서 자막 순서가 제2언어 어휘 습득에 미치는 영향

이주언 ; 김동현
경북대학교
경북대학교
Effects of subtitle sequence on L2 vocabulary acquisition through video viewing
Jooeon Lee ; Donghyun Kim
(First author) MA student, Department of English Language and Literature, Kyungpook National University lje81x@naver.com
(Corresponding author) Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Kyungpook National University donghyun@knu.ac.kr


© 2025 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study explores how subtitle order affects vocabulary acquisition in English video viewing among Korean learners. It specifically examines whether different subtitle sequences (English-to-Korean, Korean-to-English, and Korean-to-Korean) influence the learning of word forms, meanings, and their interplay. Sixty intermediate-level Korean university students participated, each assigned to one of the three conditions and watching a TED-Ed video twice. Results show that while the Korean-to-English subtitle order yielded the greatest improvement in word form recognition, the English-to-Korean subtitle order led to higher performance in immediate and delayed meaning recall tests. In the meaning recognition post-test, the Korean-to-English subtitle group achieved the highest scores, though group differences were not statistically significant. Notably, prior vocabulary knowledge was significantly correlated with learning outcomes, especially in the Korean-to-English subtitle condition, suggesting its critical role in vocabulary learning. This study highlights the potential of sequential subtitle use in reducing cognitive load and enhancing vocabulary learning in both classroom and independent video-based learning contexts.

Keywords:

incidental vocabulary learning, audiovisual input, captions, subtitles, prior vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary recognition, vocabulary recall

Acknowledgments

This paper is based on the first author’s master’s thesis. This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2023S1A5A8078806).

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