The Effect of Bimodal, Standard, and Reversed Subtitling on L2 Vocabulary Recognition and Recall

To investigate the effect of three modes of subtitling on vocabulary recognition, 97 participants in three groups at Imam Khomeini International University in Qazvin were presented with the same film but using different ways of subtitling. To compare the participants' vocabulary recognition, a one-way ANOVA was run. Results indicated that although the difference between the bimodal and standard groups was not statistically significant, both groups were significantly better than the reversed subtitling group. Another one-way ANOVA was used to compare the learners' vocabulary recall. Analyses showed that bimodal subtitling was significantly more effective than standard subtitling, which in turn, was significantly more effective than reversed subtitling. The findings of the present study can have theoretical and practical implications for both vocabulary recognition and recall.