INCIDENTAL FOREIGN-LANGUAGE ACQUISITION BY CHILDREN WATCHING SUBTITLED TELEVISION PROGRAMS

ABSTRACT

Series of international studies have shown that subtitled television programs provide a rich context for foreign language acquisition. This study investigated whether incidental language acquisition occurs from watching a television program with / without subtitles. Children in the experimental conditions watch: (a) a 15 minute snapshot of a well known children's television program in Italian with Greek subtitles, (b) the same program without subtitles and (c) the TV program in Greek (control). The acquisition of vocabulary and the recognition of Italian words were higher in the condition with the subtitles, thus indicating that Greek students of fourth, fifth and sixth grade can incidentally acquire vocabulary in a foreign language through watching subtitled television programs.