Study of the use of subtitling of media fictions in language learning related to character identification

Abstract

This research project is related to the Spanish/Chinese subtitled media consumption and the Spanish/Chinese learning for Spanish/Chinese speaking students. It focuses particularly on analyzing the uses the subtitled audiovisual products. For this purpose, in the first study, a survey was developed with 207 university students from 42 Chinese and Spanish universities who voluntarily responded to a questionnaire. A pilot study was performed in order to test the correspondence validity between the Chinese and Spanish versions of the same questionnaire. The results show that watching subtitled Spanish films and series has been preferred by the respondents, and they do it frequently. In addition, they take it as an effective way to learn Spanish. Likewise, the results indicate that the respondents are not satisfied with the current situation of the film and television market with subtitling neither in China nor in Spain. Consequently, two more further experimental studies are being developed on course. They are designed with the purpose of testing the effects of exposure to audiovisual products with different subtitling characteristics and the identification with characters in the films and TV series on the learning of the above the mentioned languages.