Research · Watching with captions ·
Do captions help you pick up words? One meta-analysis
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Can you hear where one word ends and the next begins? When speech runs together, that can be hard. Captions might make it easier.
The researchers suggest they may help intermediate learners pick out individual words in speech.
One meta-analysis brought together forty-nine experiments, comparing vocabulary learning from the same video, with and without captions. On vocabulary tests, captions gave learners a moderate advantage on average. The gap was larger with videos made for learners, and smaller with videos made for native speakers.
So next time you watch, try captions in the language you're learning.
The voiceover is AI-generated. The Italian example is ours. The authors suggest captions may help intermediate learners identify individual words in speech; this explanation was not tested in the meta-analysis.
Kurokawa, S., Hein, A. M., & Uchihara, T. (2025). Incidental vocabulary acquisition through captioned viewing: A meta-analysis. Language Learning, 75(4), 939–987. https://doi.org/10.1111/lang.12697