Meaning-Form Combined Instruction Using Film Subtitles for Language Awareness

It is a widely accepted theoretical premise in second language acquisition that learners must notice and pay attention to language forms in order to learn them. It is also believed that meaningful content is essential for language learning. These premises provide support for language instruction that integrates attention to language form with attention to meaning. However, little research has investigated ways to help learners to attend to form in content-based contexts. The goal of this study is to come up with a method that connects meaning and form with instruction and to investigate the effect of this. The study presents an experimental design of two Screen English classes (N=282) based on meaning and form connected instruction using film subtitles with a pre-test and a post-test. The findings of the study show that the approach of this study is statistically significant and highly efficient. They reveal that film subtitles put together the meaning and form of expressions and intensify the bond between them and that subtitles thereby help learners to recognize the properties of English structures in expressions in context, which suggests that all the language input from movies could be personalized and internalized.