Reverse Dubbing and Subtitling: Raising Pragmatic Awareness in Italian English as a Second Language (ESL) Learners
Jennifer Lertola Cristina Mariotti
University of Bologna University of Pavia
ABSTRACT
This paper reports a quasi-experimental study on the effects of reverse dubbing and subtitling on the pragmatic awareness of Italian English as a Second Language (ESL) learners using the web platform ClipFlair. The participants are undergraduate English language students enrolled in Political Science in Northern Italy. Students were randomly assigned to one of the following groups: Experimental Group RS, who carried out reverse subtitling tasks through ClipFlair in a classroom environment; Experimental Group RD, who carried out reverse dubbing tasks through ClipFlair in a classroom environment; Experimental Group T, who carried out translation tasks only (no subtitling and dubbing) on the same materials used by the experimental groups in a classroom environment; and a Control Group learning English in a classroom environment but not working either on translation or dubbing/subtitling tasks.
Participants from the three Experimental Groups were asked to watch three commercials over a period of six weeks and to translate them into English (reverse subtitling, reverse dubbing and translation respectively). Results show that all learners improved over time but no statistically significant difference was found between groups. However, the language assessment tests and the final questionnaire shed some light on the pedagogical potential of reverse subtitling and reverse dubbing, and thus encourage further research.
KEYWORDS
Reverse dubbing, reverse subtitling, translation, pragmatic awareness, foreign language education.