Chinese EFL Teachers' Perceptions of Subtitles' Effects on English Comprehension and Vocabulary Acquisition: Subtitles' Effects on English Capability

2.1 Subtitles

In previous studies, various terminology is used to describe the different styles of presenting words on a screen. Markham et al. (2001, p. 440) claims that subtitles “refer to on-screen texts in the form of audience native language combined with a second language soundtrack, while captions refer to on-screen texts as a given language same with the language in the soundtrack”. However, according to Neves (2008), there is no difference in the definitions of subtitling and captioning, although some believe that the distinction is that captioning is an auxiliary for the deaf and the hearing-impaired, while subtitling is intended for all viewers. It is also noted that Vanderplank (2019) uses the term ‘closed captions’ to describe subtitles in the same language as audio. Black (2021) uses the terms intralingual and interlingual subtitles, where intralingual subtitles refer to those that are in the same language as the spoken language on the audiovisual material, while interlingual subtitles are intended to provide a translation for the source language of the material. In this study, the term “subtitles” is employed to all forms of on-screen text, including examples given in this paragraph, that are accompanied by audio of the same or similar meaning, either in the same or another language.