The Effects of English and Japanese Captions on the Listening Comprehension of Japanese EFL Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of English and Japanese captions on the listening comprehension of Japanese EFL students. The subjects were instructed to watch four films with different caption conditions - English captions, Japanese captions, without captions, and audio only. They were asked what they could remember after watching each film. The results showed that English captions facilitated the understanding of both university and junior college subjects. The effects of Japanese captions, however, differed for the university and junior college students, which suggested that the effects of Japanese captions were influenced by the subjects' proficiency in English including translation ability and by the difficulty level of the listening materials.