Subtitling science: An efficient task to learn content and language

The current study aims to investigate the potential of subtitling (i.e. creating subtitles) as a means to teach/learn specialised content and a foreign language simultaneously and attempts to measure its impact by comparing creating subtitles to watching subtitled video. This was operationalized in the following research questions: Does creating subtitles help the acquisition of scientific content? Does creating subtitles help the acquisition of scientific vocabulary? How does creating subtitles compare to watching subtitled video? And, does creating subtitles increase the student’s interest in science? In order to answer these research questions, two experiments were carried out: a group of students created English and Italian subtitles for a set of short videos in English about chemistry and physics. Subsequently, some of the videos were shown to a different group of students, accompanied by English and/or Italian subtitles. All the students were tested on the contents and language in the videos. The students who created subtitles were assessed about seven days after completion of the work, while the students who watched ready-made subtitles were tested immediately after watching the video. The study showed that both activities (watching ready-made subtitles and creating subtitles) helped content understanding and language memorization. It also suggested that creating subtitles is probably a much more effective activity for language and content acquisition than watching subtitles. Finally, it showed that, though both activities increased students’ interest in science, creating subtitles increased the students’ interest to a higher extent.