What is it about?
This paper reviews studies done so far on whether subtitles can help children learn other languages and improve their literacy skills. It finds that there is a lot of evidence that subtitles can indeed help children to learn other languages and improve their reading skills in their first language or the official language of the country they live in.
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Why is it important?
A lot of research has already looked at whether subtitles can help adults learn other languages, but it seems that less attention has been paid to studies with children. This appears to be the first review of studies on this topic. It has found a lot of evidence that subtitles can help children to learn other languages and improve their literacy skills, and supports the idea that children can benefit from watching films and television programmes with the subtitles turned on.
Perspectives
I hope this article will help readers understand the evidence for the educational benefits for children of reading subtitles and that they will find it useful.
Sharon Black
University of East Anglia
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The potential benefits of subtitles for enhancing language acquisition and literacy in children, Translation Cognition & Behavior, June 2021, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/tcb.00051.bla.
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