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Reverse Dubbing and Subtitling: Raising Pragmatic Awareness in Italian English as a Second Language (ESL) Learners

Jennifer Lertola, University of Bologna
Cristina Mariotti, University of Pavia

ABSTRACT

This paper reports a quasi-experimental study on the effects of reverse dubbing and subtitling on the pragmatic awareness of Italian English as a Second Language (ESL) learners using the web platform ClipFlair. The participants are undergraduate English language students enrolled in Political Science in Northern Italy. Students were randomly assigned to one of the following groups: Experimental Group RS, who carried out reverse subtitling tasks through ClipFlair in a classroom environment; Experimental Group RD, who carried out reverse dubbing tasks through ClipFlair in a classroom environment; Experimental Group T, who carried out translation tasks only (no subtitling and dubbing) on the same materials used by the experimental groups in a classroom environment; and a Control Group learning English in a classroom environment but not working either on translation or dubbing/subtitling tasks.
Participants from the three Experimental Groups were asked to watch three commercials over a period of six weeks and to translate them into English (reverse subtitling, reverse dubbing and translation respectively). Results show that all learners improved over time but no statistically significant difference was found between groups. However, the language assessment tests and the final questionnaire shed some light on the pedagogical potential of reverse subtitling and reverse dubbing, and thus encourage further research.

KEYWORDS

Reverse dubbing, reverse subtitling, translation, pragmatic awareness, foreign language education.

1. Introduction

Translation has been neglected in mainstream applied linguistics for years. The arguments against its use substantially remain the same raised by the reform movement against the grammar-translation method of teaching modern foreign languages in the 20th century, which subsequently led to the establishment of communicative approaches. Translation has nevertheless continued to be present in language classrooms and, “[m]ost significantly, it has persisted in the spontaneous strategies of actual language learners (as opposed to the controlled learners studied in much Second Language Acquisition research) whose natural inclination, as in other areas of human learning, is to try to apprehend the unknown by relating it to the known” (Cook 2007: 397). Remarkably, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2001) has recognised translation to be a valuable mediation activity highly necessitated in today’s multilingual society, both at personal and professional levels. In the last decade, translation has finally been reappraised in literature on second language education (Cook 2010; Leonardi 2010; Laviosa 2014), and the debate is now focusing on integrating translation into the language syllabus and on using appropriate terminology (Directorate General of Translation in the EU, 2013). The report of the Directorate General of Translation in the EU (2013) defines translation as an activity that can promote language learning and suggests several mediating activities to be used in the language classroom.

Audiovisual Translation (AVT), one fast-growing area of Translation Studies, includes a number of translation tasks that can be successfully used in second language (L2) learning. AVT presents learners with polysemiotic texts, as opposed to traditional monosemiotic texts, and offers the opportunity to maximise the benefits of translation by developing not only reading and writing but also listening and speaking skills. In this context, the present study has undertaken ground-breaking research by investigating the potential of reverse subtitling and reverse dubbing vs. traditional translation tasks in the classroom. This study suggests that reverse subtitling and reverse dubbing are suitable strategies that can enhance the noticing aspect of L2 pragmatics and raise learners’ pragmatic awareness.

2. Literature Review on Audiovisual Translation

The active use of AVT tasks — captioning and revoicing — in the foreign language (L2) classroom is raising interest among researchers and teachers. Captioning refers to the written language transfer of the original soundtrack of an audiovisual product. It can be either the written translation (interlingual subtitling) or a condensed transcription (intralingual subtitling) of the original spoken language. Both intralingual and interlingual subtitling can foster language learning — in particular listening, reading and writing — as well as improve transferable skills. In language learning, and in the present study, within interlingual subtitling it is particularly relevant to distinguish between standard subtitling (original L2 spoken dialogue translated into L1 written form) and reverse subtitling (L1 dialogue translated into L2).

Revoicing indicates the oral language transfer aimed at making an audiovisual product accessible to people who otherwise would not be able to understand it, either because the audiovisual product is in a language unknown by the viewer or the viewer is visually impaired. Revoicing includes a number of tasks, such as dubbing, audio description and voice over, that can be applied in the language classroom. It offers learners the opportunity to enhance their speaking skills and reading, listening and writing can also be fostered, depending on the type of task undertaken. In language education, dubbing, like subtitling, can either be standard or reverse.

The focus of this study is on reverse captioning and dubbing. As opposed to standard subtitling and dubbing, these innovative language learning tasks can foster L2 written and oral production skills respectively. The audiovisual material presents learners with a contextualised communicative situation in their L1 that they should render in L2. In addition to the development of language competence in terms of grammar and fluency, this type of exercise is particularly suitable for the development of pragmatic competence.

The European Union (EU) has recognised the potential of AVT tasks in language learning by funding research-led projects like LeViS (Sokoli et al. 2011) and ClipFlair (Sokoli 2015). ClipFlair, based on the LeViS experience, is an innovative EU project that promotes language learning through interactive captioning and the revoicing of clips. ClipFlair can be effectively used in face-to-face, online (Incalcaterra McLoughlin and Lertola 2015), and blended learning contexts (Talaván and Rodríguez-Arancón 2014b). In recent years, scholars have primarily investigated the benefits of captioning, particularly standard subtitling, with regards to listening comprehension (Williams and Thorne 2000; Talaván 2011), vocabulary acquisition (Bravo 2010; Lertola 2012), integrated language skills (Incalcaterra McLoughlin and Lertola 2014), intercultural education (Borghetti 2011; Borghetti and Lertola 2014), and pragmatic awareness (Incalcaterra McLoughlin 2009) . Dubbing is the second most studied AVT mode after subtitling. Researchers have recognised the potential of this revoicing task for the improvement of oral language skills and have focused on the learner’s development of fluency and intonation as well as vocabulary acquisition (Burston 2005; Danan 2010; Chiu 2012; Navarrete 2013). Audio description is also gaining scholars’ attention (Gajek and Szarkowska 2013; Ibáñez Moreno and Vermeulen 2013; Talaván and Lertola 2016), but further empirical studies are needed to prove its efficacy in language learning.

Surprisingly, though, research on reverse subtitling as well as reverse dubbing is still very limited. Talaván and Rodríguez-Arancón (2014a) investigate whether reverse subtitling as a collaborative language learning tool in online settings can improve translation and writing skills. Although their sample size of intermediate Spanish learners of English was small, findings from their experimental study are very encouraging since they support reverse subtitling as a beneficial activity for translation and L2 writing. Talaván and Avila-Cabrera (2015) focus on the combination of reverse dubbing and reverse subtitling to improve oral and written production as well as general translation skills in distance-learning education. Two groups of advanced Spanish learners of English, one in formal and the other in informal learning contexts, collaboratively worked on the reverse dubbing and subtitling of clips extracted from a Spanish movie into English. Quantitative and qualitative analysis showed positive results in both production and translation skills. Written production, to which learners devoted a greater amount of time during the project, improved to a lesser extent than oral production. The researchers ascribe this difference to the great enthusiasm participants acknowledged for the dubbing task. The results of these studies encourage further research on the use of these pedagogical tools for other aspects of language competence, as well as pragmalinguistic and sociolinguistic competence, both in online and face-to-face learning contexts. The present study aims at helping to fill this gap by investigating the capacity of reverse subtitling and dubbing to raise the pragmatic awareness of Italian ESL learners in a classroom environment.

2.1 Literature Review on the Pragmatic Awareness of L2 learners

Language education researchers have recently investigated the issue of L2 pragmatic competence. Even if pragmatic competence cannot be taught just like any other competence but can only be “possessed, developed, acquired or lost” (Kasper 1997: 1), it is still important to understand how its development can be fostered in L2 learners. Pragmatics is extremely important for L2 learners because it involves the ability to communicate effectively in any sociocultural context in the target language. In this way, mastery of the grammatical structures of a language is only a pre-requisite for more complex and multi-faceted communicative tasks. According to Bachman (1990: 87), language competence can be divided into organisational competence, consisting of grammatical and textual competence; and pragmatic competence, consisting of illocutionary (i.e. knowledge of speech acts and speech functions) and sociolinguistic competence (i.e. the ability to use language appropriately according to context). One might think that once organisational competence has been achieved, L2 learners will simply apply it to the various contexts they are presented with. Nevertheless, research into the pragmatic competence of adult foreign and second language learners has demonstrated that grammatical development does not guarantee a corresponding level of pragmatic development and that even advanced learners can have trouble correctly decoding the illocutionary force of the speech acts produced by native speakers and producing contextually appropriate speech acts (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 2005; Crandall and Basturkmen 2004; Schmidt 1993). Blum-Kulka, House, and Kasper (1989: 10) report that

even fairly advanced language learners’ communicative acts regularly contain pragmatic errors, or deficits, in that they fail to convey or comprehend the intended illocutionary force or politeness value.

Moreover, Schmidt observes that pragmatic differences between L1 and L2 can easily go unnoticed unless they are directly addressed and adds that motivation is an important factor in the allocation of learners’ attentional resources (1993: 36).

Drawing on the observations reported in the above-mentioned studies, it would seem beneficial for L2 acquisition research to focus on strategies that can enhance the noticing aspect of L2 pragmatics and raise learners’ pragmatic awareness. Crandall and Basturkmen (2004) claim that many English for Academic Purposes (EAP) speaking textbooks simply present learners with lists of ‘useful expressions’ for various speech acts without showing when and for what purposes it is appropriate to make a speech act and which expressions would be appropriate in a particular situation. Thus,

the textbooks seem to wrongly assume that learners know when and how it is appropriate to make speech acts, and that all they need is to be given the phrases to do so. Since pragmatics is culture-specific, when language learners simply transfer the norms from their first culture to a second language they may fail to achieve their communicative goals (Crandall, Basturkmen 2004: 38).

Similarly, Eslami-Rasekh (2005: 199) laments the lack of both adequate materials and teacher training, and reports that one strategy that can be successfully used to raise the pragmatic awareness of ESL learners is to ask them to translate speech acts from their L1 into English (2005: 201). According to this researcher, the success of this strategy is due to the fact that pragmatic translations of instances of language use can be motivating for ESL learners. Moreover, the translation activity involves a discussion of pragmatic norms, thus increasing the chances of their being noticed by learners.

3. Research Questions

Based on the above-reviewed research, we identified reverse subtitling and dubbing as possible candidates for raising the pragmatic awareness of Italian ESL learners because they bring together reverse translation (i.e. from Italian into English) and an interactive use of AV materials, which are considered stimulating for L2 learning.

We formulated the following research questions: Can reverse subtitling and dubbing raise Italian ESL learners’ pragmatic awareness in written productions more than reverse translation alone? If the answer to this question is yes, then do reverse subtitling and reverse dubbing provide learners with equal advantages or is one more effective than the other? And, finally, which one is perceived by Italian ESL learners as being more effective?

4. Participants and Procedure

For this study we collected both quantitative and qualitative data within a quasi-experimental design. The participants were undergraduate Political Science students enrolled at a university located in Northern Italy. Their English level was B1, and their English teacher had grouped them into 4 classes. In each class, participation in the study was voluntary, but in consideration of the time and effort required to become familiar with the ClipFlair platform and to perform related activities, students who agreed to take part in the study using ClipFlair either for subtitling or dubbing were given a few bonus points by their teacher (2 out of 30) on the test they took at the end of the course. Overall, 33 subjects¹ (12 males, 21 females) participated in the study. Each class was randomly assigned one of the following conditions: Experimental Group RS performing reverse subtitling tasks in a classroom environment (7 subjects), Experimental Group RD performing reverse dubbing tasks in a classroom environment (5 subjects), Experimental Group T performing only translation tasks on the same materials used by the experimental groups in a classroom environment (no subtitling and dubbing, 8 subjects), and a Control Group learning English in a classroom environment but not working on translation or on dubbing/subtitling tasks (13 subjects). We decided to measure the learners’ performances by using a questionnaire called Discourse Completion Task (DCT). DCTs are the most commonly used elicitation tasks in interlanguage pragmatics (Bardovi-Harlig and Hartford 2005: 10) and can be described as written role plays where informants are asked to respond to the description of a discursive situation (see Appendix 1). Each questionnaire consisted of 10 items (5 complaints and 5 requests) and learners were given 30 minutes to complete it. Each item was also coded according to the type of complaint and request situation (for instance, being late or asking a favour) in order to have a pool of similar items to include in the pre-, post-immediate and post-delayed test, as illustrated in examples (1) and (2):

Example (1) Complaint: You have an important meeting and your friend promised that he would pick you up at 8pm. Your friend is very late and you are going to miss your date. What would you say to him? (LATE)
Example (2) Request: Next weekend you are throwing a party, and your mother is a great cook. You would like her to make the food for the party. How do you ask her? (FAVOUR)

All participants completed a DCT as a pre-test one week before the experimental sessions in order to test their ability to produce complaints and requests that were grammatically correct and appropriate in scenarios with varying degrees of formality. Participants from the first three groups were then asked to watch three short commercials of a famous Italian mobile phone company over a period of 6 weeks (one video every two weeks). The commercials show funny interactions between historical characters during the Italian unification period. They were broadcast on Italian TV from 2010 to 2014, and their use for didactic purposes was kindly granted to the researchers by the mobile phone company which owned their rights. We chose the target speech acts based on two criteria: their frequency in the AV materials and the fact that these acts can be used in everyday conversation, thus potentially stimulating learners to focus their attention on their appropriate realisation.

Participants from the experimental groups were required to translate the three clips from Italian into English. The teacher encouraged students to compare their L1 with the L2 while they were translating by focusing both on grammar issues (i.e. subject number-verb agreement, tenses, use of articles) and differences in pragmatic realisation (by asking them things such as: “In English we would use a question here; what would you say in Italian?”), thus eliciting a contrastive analysis from the students. After each viewing and translating sessions, the subtitling and the dubbing groups went on to use ClipFlair Studio with our technical assistance. ClipFlair, an EU-funded project for foreign language learning, has led, among other things, to the creation of ClipFlair Studio, an online platform where users (both tutors and learners) can create, upload and access revoicing and captioning activities to learn a foreign language. We instructed the learners on how to use the platform and had them perform a simulation before data collection. Moreover, we created ad hoc activities on the platform for the present study. Experimental Group RS used ClipFlair to add subtitles to each commercial, while Experimental Group RD used the platform to dub them into English (Figure 1). Students worked in pairs using the computers that were available in the classroom.

Figure 1. One of the three reverse subtitling activities in ClipFlair Studio.

One year before the present study, we carried out a pilot study to test the experimental design, the testing instruments, and the usability of the platform. Back then, the learners provided overall positive feedback but reported technical problems using the platform, which at the time was only available in beta version. Once the technical problems were solved by developers and the end version of ClipFlair Studio was ready, we decided to repeat the study involving more participants.
One week after the end of the experience, we asked learners to fill in an immediate post-test aimed at detecting variations in their grammatical competence and pragmatic awareness of requesting and complaining expressions, followed by a delayed post-test administered after two more weeks (Figure 2). We then asked them to fill in a final questionnaire with both closed and open answers where they were required to give feedback on their experience using ClipFlair and taking part in the project (Appendix 2). This same questionnaire was used within the framework of the broader international ClipFlair project to evaluate the feedback of language learners who used the ClipFlair Studio during the testing phase and had already been taken by over 1,200 learners all over Europe.

Figure 2. Procedures of the quasi-experimental study.

Naturally, the small number of informants does not allow for generalisation about the results of the present study; at the same time, though, it should be noted that previous studies in the field rely on similar numbers of informants (for instance, Talaván and Rodríguez-Arancón 2014b), and that the use of triangulation provides much greater reliability regarding the results.

5. Data Analysis

In the present study we applied a quasi-experimental research design which included language assessment tests and a final questionnaire. The language assessment - aimed at testing pragmatic competence – was comprised of pre-, post-immediate and post-delayed tests in the form of DCTs with 10 discourse completion items each (5 complaints and 5 requests). The criteria used for data analysis were: answer provided, incomplete answer, problems understanding the situation described in the scenario, grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes, and pragmalinguistic awareness (evaluated using a 0-5 scale). In this paper we consider the data regarding answer provided, incomplete answer and pragmalinguistic awareness. It should be mentioned that answers are considered incomplete when there is no reference to the actual situation. Reference can be made to the complaint/request in the same sentence or in a second sentence.

As Figure 3 illustrates, the Control Group and Experimental Group T provided a lower number of answers in the pre-test, but that positively evolved in the post-tests. The number of answers provided by the three Experimental Groups and the Control Group in the post-immediate and post-delayed test is quite homogeneous. This allows for a better comparison of the results among the groups involved in the study. With regard to incomplete answers, the situation is more diverse from group to group. The Control Group and Experimental Group T show similar performances in the pre-test and the post-immediate test. In the post-immediate test, the number of incomplete answers is higher for both groups and then decreases in the post-delayed test. Although providing more incomplete answers in all tests, Experimental Group RD and RS show similar behaviour to the Control Group and Experimental Group T. However, Experimental Group RS shows an important change in the post-delayed test and the lowest number of incomplete answers both in the post-immediate and post-delayed tests, compared to the other groups. Notably, the number of incomplete answers in the post-delayed test drops from 1 to 0.1 out of 10. This improvement could be tentatively ascribed to the positive effects of the experimental activity, i.e. the reverse subtitling task, in the long-term perspective.

Figure 3. Number of test answers provided and incomplete answers by group.

Figure 4 presents the descriptive statistics of the experimental study. The mean — the average of the scores and thus the most common descriptive measure as it takes into account all the scores (Dornyei 2007) — is on the first row, while the standard deviation (s.d.) is on the second. Since the s.d. represents the average distance between the scores and the mean, if the s.d. scores are high, the sample is usually heterogeneous and contains extreme scores. If the s.d. scores are low, the sample is homogeneous and the scores are positioned close to the mean. Therefore, the smaller the s.d., the better the mean represents the group. In a pretest-posttest design, as in this case, one may expect that after some type of experimental procedure (e.g., successful training or instruction), the post-test scores will display a higher mean (i.e. better performance) and a smaller standard deviation (i.e. subjects perform in a more similar way). Following these premises, we can see that in the immediate post-test all the experimental groups show a better performance than the Control Group. In particular, the experimental group RD shows a lower s.d., indicating that the participants’ scores are similar. In the delayed post-test, this tendency is more evident since the s.d. of the experimental group RD is even lower (1.25) and the mean score is the second highest after that of experimental group RS. The tendency of the s.d. score of Experimental Groups T and RS as well as the Control Group is high, demonstrating that these groups are less homogeneous than the RD Experimental Group. In other words, these groups contain more extreme scores. However, this tendency diminishes in the post-delayed test for the Control Group and Experimental Group T.

As we have pointed out, we noticed a difference in terms of score between the experimental groups RD and RS - whose performance is higher both in the post immediate and post delayed tests - compared to Experimental Group T and to the control group, and we decided to verify to what extent this difference is statistically significant.

Figure 4. Descriptive statistics of the experimental study.

Looking at the statistical analysis, the values for each test follow a normal (i.e., bell-shaped or Gaussian) distribution. Therefore, we used a mixed design ANOVA to test whether activity type significantly affected learners’ pragmalinguistic awareness in a pretest-posttest design. Results indicate a significant main effect of time, F(2, 58) = 43.677, p <.001, ηp2 = .60 (within-subjects effect); however, neither activity type, F(3, 29) = 3.542 (between-subject effect), nor the Time x Activity interaction, F(2, 58) = 3.715, was significant. The main effect of time indicates that between the pre-test and immediate post-test, learners’ pragmaliguistic awareness improved for all groups. At the same time, there was no between-subjects effect, which means that the activity type performed by the different groups involved in the study did not affect their performance. In other words, the statistical findings indicate that all types of translating activities — reverse dubbing, reverse subtitling and translation — as well as English teaching without translation activities result in similar improvement in participants’ pragmalinguistic awareness, thus providing a negative answer to the main research question previously formulated, that is to say whether reverse subtitling and dubbing raise Italian ESL learners’ pragmatic awareness in written production more than reverse translation alone.

The final questionnaire provides a valuable insight into the learners’ experience. The feedback received regarding reverse subtitling and reverse dubbing was overall positive. On average, the RS group needed more than 30 minutes to complete the activity while the RD group required between 20-30 minutes. Both RS and RD participants generally agreed that the activities proposed were interesting and fun but not easy. The groups’ responses differed greatly regarding the usefulness of such activities for language learning: 83% of RS participants found it useful as opposed to 16% of RD participants. This can be ascribed to the technical issues concerning the synchronisation of the voice to the video which all RD participants had encountered. In contrast, as many as 66% of the RS participants had technical problems related to the synchronisation of the captions to the video. Although both groups found the ClipFlair Studio attractive, they did not find it user-friendly: however, on the whole, all participants enjoyed the ClipFlair experience.

6. Discussion

The data analysis shows that test performance of all learners involved in the present study changes significantly over time. Although no statistically significant differences were found, the outcomes of both the post-immediate and post-delayed pragmalinguistic awareness tests of the experimental groups RD and RS are better than those of the experimental group T and of the control group NT. In other words, reverse subtitling and dubbing would seem to better raise Italian ESL learners’ pragmatic awareness in written productions compared to reverse translation. These findings are in line with those provided by previous research on reverse subtitling and dubbing in language learning. Despite the efforts in solving previous technical issues encountered in the pilot study, most of the participants had several technical problems with the web platform while carrying out the tasks. Therefore, RD and RS groups’ performance may be affected by the fact that participants tried to solve such problems rather than focusing on the task itself. In addition, time constraints put some pressure on participants to complete the requested tasks. Overall, the best results were achieved by the reverse subtitling group, but the reverse dubbing group, which was particularly affected by technical issues, had more homogeneous scores. This indicates that participants within this group gave similar performances, an aspect which endorses the effects of the experimental activity. Data obtained in the final questionnaire shows that the majority of participants enjoyed the ClipFlair activities and that activities were considered interesting and useful to language learning. In terms of time, the reverse subtitling activities required more time to be completed, but both reverse subtitling and dubbing were perceived as stimulating language tasks that encourage students to seek greater exposure to the L2.

7. Conclusions

The innovation of this study consists in the fact that it analyses the effects of audiovisual translation (AVT) tasks as opposed to traditional translation as a means to enhance ESL learning in an Italian higher education setting. Researchers in the field of pragmalinguistics stress the need for L2 acquisition research to focus on strategies that can enhance the noticing aspect of L2 pragmatics and raise learners’ pragmatic awareness (Crandall and Basturkmen 2004). AVT tasks were chosen because they seem to improve oral and written production skills while offering a stimulating activity that also helps increase students’ motivation for learning an L2 (Talaván and Avila-Cabrera 2015).

Even if no statistically significant differences were found between groups performing reverse dubbing and subtitling vs. traditional translation tasks, the fact that the outcomes of both the post-immediate and post-delayed pragmalinguistic awareness tests of the experimental groups RD and RS are better than those of the experimental group T and of the control group NT shows that these activities have potential and should be further explored. The differences between the reverse subtitling and the reverse dubbing groups, with the RD group obtaining more homogeneous scores despite technical difficulties, shows that students found dubbing more stimulating than subtitling, as supported by the feedback obtained in the final questionnaire. This confirms the importance of motivation for L2 learning (Schmidt 1993: 36) and the results found by Talaván and Avila-Cabrera (2014). Further research is necessary regarding the relationship between the interactive use of AVT materials and L2 pragmalinguistic awareness, which would increase the number of informants, measure the effects of dubbing and subtitling activities observed for a longer period of time, and eliminate technical barriers that might limit the impact of these activities on informants.

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• Talaván, Noa and Rodríguez-Arancón, Pilar (2014a). “The use of reverse subtitling as an online collaborative language learning tool.” The Interpreter and Translator Trainer, 8(1), 84-101.
• Talaván, Noa and Rodríguez-Arancón, Pilar (2014b). “The use of interlingual subtitling to improve listening comprehension skills in advanced EFL students.” Beatrice Garzelli and Michela Baldo (eds) (2014). Subtitling and Intercultural Communication. European Languages and beyond. Pisa: InterLinguistica, ETS.
• Talaván, Noa and Lertola, Jennifer (2016). “Active Audiodescription to Promote Speaking Skills in Online Environments.” Sintagma: revista de lingüística, 59-74.
• Williams, Helen, and Thorne, David (2000) “The value of teletext subtitling as a medium for language learning.” System 28(2), 217-228.

Biography

Jennifer Lertola is a tutor in the School of Languages and Literatures, Translation and Interpreting of the University of Bologna, Italy. She holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition from the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her main research interests include foreign language education, audiovisual translation and distance learning. Her recent publications include articles in peer-reviewed journals and chapters in edited books.

E-mail: jennifer.lertola@gmail.com

Cristina Mariotti is Associate Professor of English in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Pavia University, Italy. Her research is focused on English as a medium of instruction and the use of AV materials in language learning. She is the author of the volume Interaction Strategies in English-medium Instruction (FrancoAngeli, 2007), and she has co-edited the volume Subtitles and Language Learning (Peter Lang 2014).

E-mail: cristina.mariotti@unipv.it

Appendix 1 - Immediate post-test

Name___________________________________________

Please complete the test writing a sentence that you think is suitable to the context.

1) For the fourth time in a row, your brother has lost your favourite CD. You decide to speak to him about it. What would you say?

2) A friend of yours is a great DJ. You would like him to choose the music for your birthday party. How do you ask him?

3) You are trying to study in your room and hear loud music coming from another student's room down the hall. You don't know the student but you decide to ask him to turn down the music. How do you ask him?

4)You are going to a party and you want a friend to lend you a dress. How would you ask her?

5) You are studying in the library and a student is making too much noise. She is disturbing you and other students so you decide to complain to her about it. What do you say to her?

6) You are at the bus stop in front of the university building and you realised that you have left your wallet at home. You decide to approach one of your friend ask him the money for the bus ticket. What would you say?

7) You are doing your homework on the kitchen table. Your sister inadvertently spills a glass of water on your notebook. What would you say?

8) You are going away for the summer. You decide to ask your mum to water your plants while you are on holidays. How would you ask her?

9) You lend a friend your Mp3 player, but when it is returned it is broken. You are very annoyed. What would you say?

10) You missed a TV programme you like very much and your friend has recorded it. You have missed the last episode of your favourite TV series, your friend has watched it. How would you ask her to tell you about it?

Thank you!
Appendix 2 - Final Questionnaire

About the ClipFlair Activity

OBSERVATIONS: please write down anything you consider relevant (for example, what aspects you think are the best features of or could help to improve ClipFlair). Your opinion is very important to us.

1. Time I needed to complete the activity
5-10 min    10-20 min  20-30 min  more than 30 min

2. The activity was

	Not at all	No	More or less	Yes	Very much so
interesting
fun
useful for language learning
useful for improving my competence in translation
easy
had clear instructions
I would like to do more activities like the one I did

3. Do you think that subtitling/captioning is useful for language learning?

Not at all	No	More or less	Yes	Very much so

4. Do you think that dubbing/revoicing is useful for language learning?

Not at all	No	More or less	Yes	Very much so

5. Do you think that translating from an L1 into an L2 is useful for language learning?

Not at all	No	More or less	Yes	Very much so

6. Would you like to have subtitling or dubbing as a regular activity in your English class?

Not at all	No	More or less	Yes	Very much so

7. I have used video or multimedia as a language student before doing any ClipFlair Activity

	1	2	3	4	5
Not at all.						A lot

8. I like working with clips and audiovisual material to learn foreign languages

	1	2	3	4	5
Not at all.						A lot

9. I like working with computers

	1	2	3	4	5
Not at all.						A lot

10. Describe your experience with the web application

	Not at all	No	More or less	Yes	Very much so
The ClipFlair Studio is user-friendly
The  interface is attractive
On the whole, I enjoyed the ClipFlair experience

11. I had technical problems:      YES            NO

•  (if YES, please specify in the next question)

12. I had technical problems with

• The video
• The captions
• The audio
• The synchronisation
• Other:

Endnotes

Note 1:
Initially 44 students applied to take part in the study. However, a total of 33 of them completed all required tasks to be considered in this experimental study. Return to this point in the text