I wonder if the results were affected by the fact that the children were apparently assigned a task and were actively analyzing the language.
Children's vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language through watching subtitled television programs at home
Abstract:
Subtitled television programs seem to provide a rich context for foreign language acquisition. Moreover, viewers are generally quite motivated to understand what is shown and said on television. The present study investigated whether children in Grades 4 and 6 (N = 246) learn English words through watching a television program with an English soundtrack and Dutch subtitles. Children were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: (a) watching an English television program with Dutch subtitles, (b) watching the same English program without subtitles, and (c) watching a Dutch television program (control). The study was carried out using a 15-min documentary about grizzly bears. Vocabulary acquisition and recognition of English words were highest in the subtitled condition, indicating that Dutch elementary school children can incidentally acquire vocabulary in a foreign language through watching subtitled television programs.
Educational Technology Research and Development
Springer Boston
Volume 47, Number 1 / March, 1999
3 comments:
15 minutes? What were they expecting to happen in 15 minutes? This kind of study shows that the researchers have little real knowledge about language acquisition. Something that takes thousands of hours can not be simplified to 15 minutes and then extrapolated.
Furthermore, this is another good example where the researchers seem to think that language acquisition is only about vocabulary.
Oh, I see that was 11 years ago. Whew! To think, we've come such a long way since then! :)
There may be one - rather narrow, to be sure - way out for these guys. They did the experiment with a widely studied language, English, so the subjects had some prior knowledge of it.
Krashen gives an example of inadequate sample size in the early part of this talk: http://vodreal.fhsu.edu/ramgen/education/krashen.rm
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