The Effect of Movies on Inference the Meanings of Vocabulary: Turkish L2 Learners of English
Tuğba AYDIN YILDIZ
Abstract
The present study aimed to investigate the potential effect of inferring the meaning from visual context in the acquisition of the vocabulary with second language adult learners of English (L2 learners). Firstly, due to being interesting, rich in terms of vocabulary and not boring, an English movie "The King's Speech" was chosen. An offline vocabulary test was prepared in order to decide which words (from the mentioned movie) were unknown by the subjects, then including 20experimental sentences and 40 fillers. After that, the same vocabularies were presented in the context as “The King’s Speech” movie with 6 episodes was screened on the projector in the classroom, and each of them was almost 20 minutes. What is expected from the L2 learners is to infer the meaning of the unknown vocabularies most correctly in the visual and audial context. After six session of watching the movie, all participants were requested to answer the multiple-choice vocabulary post-test. The results have showed that most of the participants are better at inferring the meanings in questions after visual context sessions.
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