Do same language subtitles help children learn to read?

This project will investigate whether having subtitles turned on for children’s television programmes helps children learn to read.

Practice is crucial to building reading fluency. However, less than a third of children engage in daily reading outside of class and nearly 10% of disadvantaged children don’t own a book. A campaign called ‘Turn on the Subtitles’ argues that same language subtitles should be turned on by default for children’s TV programming as a way of providing increased reading experience.

The research team will be conducting two laboratory experiments to establish the efficacy of subtitles in supporting reading acquisition.

• The first experiment will use eye-tracking to investigate the impact of subtitles on eye movement, whether it impacts comprehension, and how this varies by age and reading proficiency.
• The second experiment will test the hypothesis that subtitles improve reading skills, and whether the benefits are larger for children with lower reading proficiency and experience. 132 children will be recruited for a six-week intervention, half of whom will be allocated to a subtitle group, and the other half will watch television as they normally do. Children’s reading performance will be assessed before and after the intervention to test the effects of longer-term exposure to subtitles on reading fluency.

The research team have identified a variety of stakeholders: the Department for Education and Department for Culture, Media and Sport, campaign groups, parents, pupils, academics and the general public. The team will engage media organisations involved in children’s TV programming by collaborating with the StoryFutures creative industries cluster at Royal Holloway, University of London. Building on links within the literacy community and the campaigns ‘Turn on the Subtitles’ and ‘CaptionsON’ will allow the findings of the project to have maximum impact.