Smart subtitles for vocabulary learning
Author(s)
Kovacs, Geza; Miller, Robert C.
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Language learners often use subtitled videos to help them learn. However, standard subtitles are geared more towards comprehension than vocabulary learning, as translations are nonliteral and are provided only for phrases, not vocabulary. This paper presents Smart Subtitles, which are interactive subtitles tailored towards vocabulary learning. Smart Subtitles can be automatically generated from common video sources such as subtitled DVDs. They provide features such as vocabulary definitions on hover, and dialog-based video navigation. In our pilot study with intermediate learners studying Chinese, participants correctly defined over twice as many new words in a post-viewing vocabulary test when they used Smart Subtitles, compared to dual Chinese-English subtitles. Learners spent the same amount of time watching clips with each tool, and enjoyed viewing videos with Smart Subtitles as much as with dual subtitles. Learners understood videos equally well using either tool, as indicated by self-assessments and independent evaluations of their summaries.
Date issued
2014-04Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer ScienceJournal
Proceedings of the 32nd annual ACM conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '14)
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Citation
Geza Kovacs and Robert C. Miller. 2014. Smart subtitles for vocabulary learning. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 853-862.
Version: Author's final manuscript
ISBN
9781450324731