Investigating the Effect of Video Captioning on Iranian EFL Learners’ Listening Comprehension

The purpose of the study was to examine the effect of the video captioning on Iranian EFL learners’ listening comprehension. A total of homogenized students in a private English language institute in Ilam, Iran (Safir English language institute) participated in the study. The students were randomly assigned to two groups to receive treatments. Both groups watched 10 short episodes (20 minutes) of an English instructional videotape. The difference between these groups was in presence of the caption of the film; that is, the experimental group watched the film with English caption and the control group watched the film without caption. The results of the post-test multiple-choice exam revealed that using captions had a significant effect on students’ listening comprehension and those who received the English captions outperformed the other groups. Based on the obtained results, it was concluded that providing captions for Iranian EFL learners could be helpful in overcoming some of their listening comprehension difficulties.