Intelligent Design of Captions in Interactive Multimedia Listening Environments

Abstract

In this chapter, 48 language learners' perceptions towards the presence of captions at the first listening (i.e. the while listening stage) in an IME that aimed to enhance the language learners' listening skills as a part of learning English as a second language were investigated. The language learners were autonomous intermediate (and upper intermediate) non-native speakers (NNSs). The results reveal that captions should not be available at the while-listening stage in IMEs for FLL/SLL. The availability of the captions at the while-listening stage in IMEs for FLL/SLL seems to make language learners rely on captions. Instead, the unavailability of the captions at the while-listening stage in IMEs for FLL/SLL seems to: (1) help language learners to focus on listening texts, (2) encourage language learners to try to understand listening texts without captions help and (3) encourage and motivate language learners to listen to / view the listening texts more.