The+Effect+of+Films+With+or+Without+Subtitles+on+Listening+Comprehension+of+EFL+Intermediate+Students+(Collazo)

Fernández, M. (2004). Interaction in the English classroom; an exploratory study. //Revista Electrónica “Actualidades Investigativas en Educación” 4//(001). pp. 1 - 25.

The author’s purpose is to describe the interaction process that took place in an EFL classroom at a public high school in the province of Alajuela, Costa Rica. Since the research was done as a qualitative one, the author makes use of a set of research techniques based on the ethnographic method such as non-participant observations, questioning, and interviewing. The results that were obtained from such research instruments and techniques showed that the interaction pattern among teacher and students is determined as “question and answer”. This pattern shows how limited the teacher-student and student-student interaction is. The study also shows that the only way students interact among themselves is by speaking in Spanish. Taking into account that the problem the author is focusing on is the lack of active participation, he gives some suggestions at the end of the article. The main suggestion he makes is that teachers who want to promote active participation in their classrooms, must plan their lessons using a lot of total physical response**//.//** activities such as role plays, oral presentations, group projects, among others. The author ends up his conclusions by suggesting that no matter what kind of materials and activities the teacher brings to the classroom, his/her attitude is what makes students participate in an active way.

The author is carrying out this research because he wanted to find the problems that take place inside of the EFL classroom regarding to interaction and its relation with active participation. The author is focusing only on the bad aspects of the teacher to take advantage of them and give suggestions and possible solutions to the lack of active participation in students, using interaction techniques as the main proposal to solve this issue. The author provides a list of recommendations in which he points out that sometimes teachers avoid the use of interactive activities because of the lack of time, but he insists in the use of these kind of activities because of their effectiveness in building students motivation, which at the same time is one of the reasons why students participate in a class. I think that the recommendations that the author makes are really useful for my classes in practicum. I have been dealing with lack of active participation in my classes, and after reading this article, it seems that my idea of promoting motivation through the use of TPR activities was right. Nothing encourages more to students to participate actively than having them playing and motivated all the time, but as the author emphasizes in his conclusion, the success of applying one technique or using one activity, depends on the teacher’s attitude, because it is what makes students feel comfortable enough as to participate actively.

Hayati, A. & Mohmedi, F. (2010). The effect of films with and without subtitles on listening comprehension of EFL intermediate students. //Int J Instr Media 37//(3) pp. 301 - 313

The author is attempting to find a solution about the use of subtitles as a listening comprehension activity for EFL intermediate students from an Iranian University. He demonstrates that one way to help students improving their listening comprehension is through the use of subtitles in English for films with English audio. The use of subtitles is divided into three different options. The first one is having students __to__ watch a film in English but with first language (Persian) subtitles (PS); the second one is having students to watch a film in English but with English subtitles (ES); and the last one is having students to watch a film in English but without subtitles (WS). This study was applied to 90 students from the Islamic Azad University of Masjed Soleyman. Students were divided into three different groups, where they had to watch the same film but each one with a different subtitling option from the ones provided above this paragraph (PS, ES, and WS). This study is significant since its results show that having intermediate students to watch a film in English with English subtitles, is the best way from the three options to help them improve their listening comprehension. This is because they only look at the subtitles to check words they misunderstand from the spoken part in the film, which is totally opposite to the other two options. When students have first language subtitles and English audio, they tend to read the subtitles without paying attention to the actual film. When there are no subtitles, students do not have anything to help them when getting confused with spoken words in the film.

The author wanted to carry out this study because in his perspective regarding EFL in Iranian Universities, the use of new educational technologies along with the research made on this field, are missing information and studies about the use of subtitles for listening comprehension. This study helps me to reinforce my theory about the use of subtitles in English for films with English audio. Students reading subtitles find this useless if the subtitles are exactly the same words in the audio, so they decide to enjoy the film without worrying about reading the subtitles. Teachers think that these kind of listening activities end up being reading activities but it is not always necessarily true. As the study shows in its discussion section, students know that they can get more help to understand the dialogues in the film by actually watching the film. This implies listening to the original sountrack, watching characters’ facial expressions, settings, etc. Students understand that subtitles are there just in case they listen to a strange pronunciation or accent for a word and want to verify it by reading to the subtitles. They do not have to code-switching as when they read the subtitles in the first language and the audio is in English. They do not get lost with dialogues because they have subtitles there to help them. When there is not any kind of text students can follow, they get confused with spoken dialogues, that's why teachers are encouraged to use English subtitles for English audio films with intermediate levels.