The effect of the subtitling task on vocabulary learning

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental study carried out at the National University of Ireland to investigate the development of subtitling in the foreign-language class. The study uses both qualitative and quantitative methods and focuses on the effects of the subtitling task on incidental vocabulary acquisition. The sixteen students (Level A2 of CEFR) of Italian as a foreign language were assigned either subtitling practice (Experimental Group) or oral comprehension tasks and writing tasks (Control Group). Both groups worked for a total of four hours (1 hour per week). All participants sat a pre-test to ensure the target words were unknown; immediate and delayed post-tests were administered after the experiment. The results are presented and discussed.