The Influence of Culture-Specific Background Knowledge and Captions on Second Language Comprehension

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of caption availability on advanced university-level ESL students' comprehension of contrasting, religion-specific video material. Seventy-nine advanced ESL students participated in the study. Fifty-four of these students reported that they were religion-neutral, having very little or no knowledge of Buddhist or Muslim religious rites. Sixteen students self-reported being practicing Muslims, and nine of the students self-reported being practicing Buddhists. The videotaped episodes consisted of two excerpts from a series of public television broadcasts concerning world religions. The first episode (9 min., 25 sec.) presented information about the Muslim religion and the second episode (10 min., 11 sec.) displayed information about Buddhism. The students were enrolled in six different sections of an intensive English course and participated as intact groups. Each group viewed the Muslim episode once with or without captions, and the Buddhist episode once ...