L1 First or L2 First? Effects of Different Subtitling Order on Listening and Speaking Skills

The focus of this study is on the ordering effects of different subtitles on listening and speaking skills. Participants comprised 47 students from a university in Korea. The whole experiment was administered in 2019 academic year. All participants in the current study were taking English conversation class to improve their communicative competence. They were randomly assigned either to L1 first group (n = 26) or L2 first group (n = 21), and exposed to authentic videos over a period of six weeks. In order to verify the ordering effects that different subtitles have on the improvement of listening and speaking skills, the present study employed pre- and post-treatment tests. For the pre- and post-tests, participants took TOEFL-based listening and speaking pre- and post-tests. After the post-test, a perception survey was also performed to obtain the participants’ view of subtitling order and language learning. Paired samples t-tests and independent samples ttests were administered to analyze the quantitative data. Major findings suggested that speaking skills can improve regardless of subtitling order while listening skills can increase with L1 subtitles presented first. In addition, L2 first group outperformed L1 first group in terms of listening skills. L2 first group also indicated more interest and motivation in foreign language learning. These findings yield practical and pedagogical implications for foreign language teachers in Korea.