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Can film dubbing projects facilitate EFL learners’ acquisition ofEnglish pronunciation?_1252 24..27

Yi-hui Chiu

Address for correspondence: Prof. Yi-hui Chiu, Department of Applied Foreign Languages, National Taipei College ofBusiness, No. 321, Sec. 1, Jinan Road, Taipei 100, Taiwan. Email: florencexyz@gmail.com

IntroductionIn this study, the effects of film dubbing projects were investigated in English as a ForeignLanguage (EFL) conversation classes, with emphasis on pronunciation. As Brown argued:“pronunciation [is] a key to gaining full communicative competence” (Brown, 2001, p. 283).Accordingly, there has been growing attention to Second Language (L2) pronunciation acquisi-tion and learning, with emphasis on the differences between native speakers and nonnativespeakers (Celce-Murcia, Brinton & Goodwin, 1996; Morley, 1991), and prosodic features—stress,rhythm and intonation (Morley, 1991).

Film dubbing utilizes authentic film clips, with which learners dub the voices of muted charac-ters. In contrast with the traditional approach to pronunciation instruction, film dubbing is asupplementary method whereby EFL learners acquire English pronunciation. Approaches to filmdubbing projects have been outlined by several researchers for application in an EFL context.Burston (2005) focused on the making of video clips for language learning. Danan (2010)utilized the film dubbing projects as translation venues.

The method of film dubbing offers a unique opportunity for the imitation of English pronuncia-tion and intonation within a contextualized scenario. A communicative approach to teachingpronunciation or speech is suggested to be more effective than focusing on individual phonemesin current pronunciation pedagogy (Celce-Murcia et al, 1996; Morley, 1991; Vitanova & Miller,2002).

Despite the interest in film dubbing, existing studies have not offered empirical evaluation of theeffects of synchronized film dubbing projects in the EFL context. Therefore, this study aims toexplore two research questions:

1. Is film dubbing an effective teaching approach in an EFL context?2. If so, can doing film dubbing projects facilitate EFL learners’ acquisition of pronunciation and

intonation? To what extent can film dubbing benefit language learners?

MethodsParticipantsTwo intact classes of 83 freshmen in an EFL conversation course at an urban college in North-ern Taiwan participated in this study. Participants were randomly assigned to each of theclasses. All had previously undertaken a 1-year fundamental pronunciation course and had anunderstanding of basic pronunciation rules. Group A (n = 41) was designated as the experi-mental group and Group B (n = 42) as the control group. Students in the experimental groupparticipated in film dubbing, while those in the control group undertook a conversation coursewithout dubbing.

British Journal of Educational Technology Vol 43 No 1 2012 E24–E27doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2011.01252.x

© 2011 The Author. British Journal of Educational Technology © 2011 BERA. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, OxfordOX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

ProceduresThe goal of the film dubbing task was to perform a synchronized presentation in front of theentire class as a form of final exam, in preparation for which each group, consisting of two to fourmembers, selected a clip of an English-language movie or television episode around 10 minutes.Each group reported the title to the teacher before commencing further work. Group memberspractised their lines by first reading the scripts out loud with emphasis on pronunciation of wordsand phrases. They subsequently watched the entire film in the target language to ensure that theycould put the correct emotion to the film. They first practised with a muted video clip, subse-quently practicing voice synchronization with the characters in the film clip. Finally, on the dayof presentation, the (muted) clip was played for the entire class, at which time group membersread subtitles and acted as the voice actors in the scene.

InstrumentsThe instruments included a questionnaire and semistructured interviews. The questionnaire wasdesigned based upon feedback and interview data gathered from language learners in previousyears. The questionnaire consisted of 33 statements constructed over seven components: how theapproach met the goals of the learners, the dubbing presentation, language use, dramatization tocheck awareness of intonational change, motivation and autonomy, teaching method and thetask-based approach. A 5-point Likert scale was adopted with responses ranging from “stronglyagree” (five points) to “strongly disagree” (one point). The Cronbach’s alpha value was 0.918,indicating that the internal consistency of the components was high.

Interviews were conducted with 10 students to triangulate the data from the questionnaire andto gain more detailed descriptions of learners’ perceptions.

Data analysisBoth quantitative and qualitative data were collected for analysis. An independent sample t-testwas performed to examine differences between the two groups in responses to the questionnaire.Interviews were transcribed and coded. Interview data were coded and common patterns werecategorized into themes. The coding was also cross-checked by an independent researcher toprevent bias.

Results and discussionAnalysis of the questionnaire strongly suggests that students consider film dubbing tasks to be aneffective method of improving pronunciation. The dubbing group significantly outperformed theconversation group in terms of learners’ goals (t = 3.950, p = 0.000), dubbing presentation(t = 3.040, p = 0.003), language use (t = 2.384, p = 0.020), dramatization (t = 3.334, p = 0.001)and task based (t = 2.409, p = 0.019). Reactions of participants in the film dubbing group wereoverwhelmingly positive for five of the categories, in support of the theoretical claims of previousliterature (Burston, 2005). These findings indicate that dubbing video projects are in concor-dance with the goals of learners, echoed by Derwing and Munro’s (2005) claim of setting realisticgoals. Moreover, they show that synchronous dubbing presentation was effective, in concert withthe findings from Danan’s (2010) study.

The main reason why significant positive differences were found for the experimental group mightbe that learners felt motivated to learn due to the film dubbing task providing a contextualizedscenario for meaningful learning. The qualitative findings imply that video dubbing projects arean effective means to improving pronunciation and intonation in several ways, as follows:

1. Film dubbing helps learners to reduce mispronunciation.The majority of learners suggested that when they engaged in film dubbing projects, they paidmore attention to pronouncing words and phrases well. Participants reported that they only

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noticed their mispronunciation of certain words after watching the films, where previouslythey had simply read the words without trying to pronounce them.

2. Learners improved in fluency by doing the projects.Given the time constraints of a rolling film, speaking must occur within a limited period oftime. As the learners were to perform in synchrony in public, they had to perform numerousrehearsals to keep pace with the video clip. With repeated practice, they naturally becamemore fluent.

3. It helps learners raise awareness of intonation.Learners reported that the most difficult part of the film dubbing project was to expressemotion in muted video clips. Students also said that listening to the original film facilitatedthe ability to improve intonation, stress and linkage.In addition to linkage, the learners also claimed that they knew how to express the risingand falling intonation, making every sentence expressed differently, and use stress to empha-size what they attempt to underscore. One student said that he used to speak in a monoto-nous way. However, when he was going to do the dubbing, he felt that he made obviousimprovement due to needing to involve himself in the context, placing emotion to thecharacter he dubbed.

4. Learners linked the pronunciation textbook with the actual use.As one participant commented, the intonation on the compact discs accompanied by theEFL textbook was far less dramatic and lacked the authentic context in contrast with that offilms. Additionally, participants indicated that they were more able to associate what theywere taught with the actual use; that is, they could notice features discussed in the pronun-ciation textbook, for instance, linkage (eg, such as and first of all should be pronounced assuchas and firstof all).

5. Film dubbing meets learners’ perceptions.The vast majority of learners in the study responded that they desired the accents of nativespeakers. One student thought that it was interesting to distinguish and imitate the accentsin film clips and that she learned expressions of native speakers in doing the project. Com-bined with all the benefits in pronunciation and intonation, they think that the approachwill help them communicate more smoothly.

Despite the benefits of film dubbing projects, however, it is not clear in the data that learners madenoticeable improvements in fluency, delivery and pronunciation or the extent to which they madeobvious progress. In addition, the nature of the focus-on-form task embedded in synchronousfilm dubbing is not entirely in accordance with the principles of communicative language teach-ing because learners produce utterances through internalization. These considerations meritfurther investigation into the effects of film dubbing projects on learning and skill-specificimprovements.

ConclusionThe film dubbing method offers authentic and contextualized scenarios that afford opportunitiesfor learners to correct their pronunciation and intonation and to improve the effusiveness ofvoice. Synchronization with film clips was found to increase linguistic awareness and improvespeaking fluency. Students aimed to create work that was as expressive and natural as the originalthrough clear enunciation, the adding of sound effects and dramatic intonation. Film dubbingwas found to be a valuable supplementary method that serves both authentic and communicativepurposes for improving EFL pronunciation.

AcknowledgementsThis paper was supported by the National Science Council in the Republic of China, Taiwan (NSC100-2410-H-141-011).

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ReferencesBrown, H. D. (2001). Teaching by principles: an interactive approach to language pedagogy (2nd ed.). New York:

Longman.Burston, J. (2005). Video dubbing projects in the foreign language curriculum. CALICO Journal, 23, 1,

77–92.Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D. & Goodwin, J. (1996). Teaching pronunciation: a reference for teachers of English

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translation into task-based instruction. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 23, 441–456.Derwing, T. M. & Munro, M. J. (2005). Second language accent and pronunciation teaching: a research-

based approach. TESOL Quarterly, 39, 379–397.Morley, J. (1991). Pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages. TESOL

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