More on Caption Use: A Response to Stewart and Pertusa

CONTINUING COMMENTARY Paul Markham University of Kansas In the Fall 2004 issue of Foreign Language Annals, Stewart and Pertusa added to the body of literature supporting the value of captions in enhancing target language vocabulary recognition. Their research is welcome and adds to the field of knowledge. However, in reacting to a possible suggested developmental order of caption use (Markham, Peter, & McCarthy) in the Fall 2001 issue of FLA, Stewart and Pertusa (2004) maintained that it makes no sense to begin a developmental sequence with English (home language) subtitles and cite a long list of researchers who ostensibly support their opinion. Unfortunately, none of the supporting researchers cited in their article have done research specifically with captions and, therefore, the suggestion that these other researchers support the position of Stewart and Pertusa was based on interpretations that are taken out of context. In addition, Stewart and Pertusa assumed a particular purpose for the learning task, a certain level of passage difficulty, and a certain set of hypothetical characteristics of the learners that match the university-level foreign language students in their own study. In the hypothetical scenario presented by Markham, Peter, & McCarthy (2001), if the intended passage is judged to be very difficult, as was mentioned by these researchers, the teacher could decide to begin with home language captions (English in this case) for an obvious purpose. That purpose would be to build the students' background knowledge so that they would begin to develop some form of basic understanding of the passage material. This basic understanding would then form a foundation for further development. This is an important distinction as the focus of the Markham, Peter, and McCarthy article is on comprehension, not vocabulary development. If a given foreign language teacher deems the first step of the suggested developmental order to be unnecessary because the passage material is considered to be fairly easy, the teacher could certainly begin with target language captions. Stewart and Pertusa also seemed to make assumptions about the hypothetical student population that Markham, Peter, and McCarthy did not suggest. If the students were intermediate-level foreign language students attending a university, as was the case in the Stewart and Pertusa study, one can rightly assume that their target language reading ability was generally more advanced than their target language listening ability. They could, therefore, easily begin with target-language-captioned material. If, however, the hypothetical students are elementary-level English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students who have never had the opportunity to learn to read in their native language but are somewhat target language (English) literate, the appropriate first step would begin with English language captions if the passage was deemed to be very challenging. In a bilingual education class at the elementary level, students could begin with home language captions if the passage was considered to be particularly difficult. The captions in the bilingual education scenario could first be presented in Spanish (assuming that is the students' home language), as that is likely the language in which the bilingual education students were first taught to read. In short, the contention of Stewart and Pertusa that the suggested developmental sequence in the Markham, Peter, and McCarthy article is flawed was based on unfounded assumptions imposed by Stewart and Pertusa concerning the purpose of the learning task, passage difficulty, and the characteristics of the students. References Stewart, M., & Pertusa, I. (2004). Gains to language learners from viewing target language closed-captioned films. Foreign Language Annals, 37(3), 438-447. Markham, P., Peter, L., & McCarthy, T. (2001). …