Effects of Repeated Viewing on Attention to Bilingual Subtitles and <scp>L2</scp> Incidental Vocabulary Learning: An Eye‐Tracking Study

Abstract This study examined how repeated viewings affect attention to bilingual subtitles and the relationship between lexical subtitle viewing and vocabulary learning. Sixty‐five sophomore English majors from China were invited to watch a short video with bilingual subtitles four times, while their viewing attention was measured through the total duration of fixation, average duration of fixation, and number of fixations. Vocabulary gains were assessed via form recognition, meaning recall, and meaning recognition of the target words. Results indicated that the overall attention to the bilingual subtitle area remained constant throughout repetitions, with more attention paid to L2 than L1 in general. That being said, with subsequent repetitions, the L1 viewing decreased significantly while it increased for L2. This suggested a growing engagement with L2 subtitles over time. For vocabulary learning, the viewing of L2 target words predicted the gains in form recognition, whereas the gains in meaning recall and meaning recognition were significantly associated with the L1 viewing. These results furnished empirical evidence for the understanding of bilingual subtitle viewing behaviors and shed light on the pedagogical usage of the repetition strategy in video watching in light of L2 vocabulary learning.