Subtitled Adventures: The Impact of Subtitles on EFL Students' Vocabulary and Listening Skills While Watching Toy Story 4

The study is focused on the role that subtitles play in helping intermediate EFL learners learn new vocabulary and improve listening comprehension.A quasi-experimental design was utilized with 60 study participants.Participants were separated into four groups: (1) L2, watching English audio with English subtitles; (2) L1, English audio with Persian subtitles; (3) watching without any subtitles, and (4) a control group not exposed to any audiovisual aids.The subjects watched the animated movie Toy Story 4. All groups were assessed before and after the study using tests and delayed post-tests.The results of the quasi-experimental analysis showed that the L2 subtitle group performed best in both vocabulary and listening comprehension, followed by the L1 subtitles group.The group that did not use any subtitles had moderate success, while the control group showed no changes.Statistical analysis, including ANOVA and effect size calculation, proved that a combined approach using subtitle support was more effective for long-term vocabulary retention.These findings support theories of multimodal learning that favor the use of L2 subtitles as a pedagogical approach in language instruction.The study also emphasizes structured exposure to subtitled content and calls for further research on the impact of subtitles for different proficiency levels and film genres.