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Foreign-grammar acquisition while watching

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Article in British Journal of Educational Psychology July 2006

DOI: 10.1348/000709905X38946 Source: PubMed

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243

The
British
Psychological
British Journal of Educational Psychology (2006), 76, 243258
q 2006 The British Psychological Society
Society

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Foreign-grammar acquisition while watching

subtitled television programmes

Sven Van Lommel, Annouschka Laenen and Gery dYdewalle*

University of Leuven, Belgium

Background. Past research has shown that watching a subtitled foreign movie
(i.e. foreign language in the soundtrack and native language in the subtitles) leads to
considerable foreign-language vocabulary acquisition; however, acquisition of the
grammatical rules has failed to emerge.
Aims. The aim of this study was to obtain evidence for the acquisition of grammatical
rules in watching subtitled foreign movies. Given an informal context, younger children
were predicted to outperform older children in acquiring a foreign language; however,
older children will take more advantage of explicit instruction compared with younger
children.
Sample. In Experiment 1, 62 sixth-graders from a primary school and 47 sixth-
graders from a secondary school volunteered to participate. The participants in
Experiment 2 were 94 sixth-graders from primary schools and 84 sixth-graders from
secondary schools.
Method. The two experiments manipulated the instructions (incidental- vs.
intentional-language learning). Moreover, before the experiments began, some
participants explicitly received some of the foreign grammatical rules (presented
rules), while the movie contained cases of presented rules as well as cases of rules
which had to be inferred (not-presented rules).
Results. Rule acquisition through the movie only was not obtained; there was a
strong effect of advance rule presentation but only on the items of presented rules,
particularly among the older participants.
Conclusions. Contrary to vocabulary, grammar may be too complicated to acquire
from a rather short movie presentation.

Television programmes from abroad are often translated to assist the audience
comprehend the foreign-language soundtrack. Smaller language communities prefer
subtitling to costly dubbing (replacing the original soundtrack by a soundtrack in ones
own language). With subtitling, the viewers are presented with sequences of pictures,
the soundtrack in a foreign language, and the subtitles in the mother tongue. Therefore,

* Correspondence should be addressed to Gery dYdewalle, Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, B-3000 Leuven,
Belgium (e-mail: gery.dydewalle@psy.kuleuven.be).

DOI:10.1348/000709905X38946
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244 Sven Van Lommel et al.

the setting offers the opportunity to incidentally acquire the foreign language from the
soundtrack. However, in order to enable language acquisition through watching and
enjoying a subtitled television programme, both the foreign language in the soundtrack
as well as the native language in the subtitle should be processed up to a certain degree.
There is already considerable evidence (for an overview, see dYdewalle & Gielen,
1992) that subtitles are processed mandatorily, irrespective of knowledge of the foreign
language in the soundtrack, the (in)availability of a soundtrack, and (lack of) familiarity
with subtitling. Even when both the subtitles and the soundtrack are in the mother
tongue, viewers spend considerable time watching the subtitles. Not only do viewers
attend to subtitles, they remember surprisingly well the precise wording. Also, children
attend to subtitles from the end of second grade in primary school. The basic eye
movement characteristics (fixation numbers and durations, saccade amplitude, and
number of regressive eye movements) in the subtitles are approximately the same as the
basic eye movement characteristics in reading regular, printed text, suggesting true
reading of the subtitles (De Bruycker & dYdewalle, 2003).
Dual-task experiments have provided evidence that soundtracks in foreign
languages are not ignored (e.g. Sohl, 1989); performance on one task (in this case,
reaction times to a light flash in combination with a tone probe) is taken as a
processing indicator of another simultaneous task (in this case, watching a subtitled
television programme). Reaction times to light flashes (Task 2) were slower when the
ongoing movie (Task 1) contained both a soundtrack and subtitles, compared with
either soundtrack or subtitles only. Apparently people also attend to the foreign
language soundtracks.
As the soundtrack and subtitles are being processed, incidental acquisition of the
foreign language may be expected. Acquisition of foreign-language vocabulary has been
firmly established in adults (dYdewalle & Pavakanun, 1995, 1996, 1997; Pavakanun &
dYdewalle, 1992) and children (dYdewalle & Van de Poel, 1999). Except in children
(dYdewalle & Pavakanun, 1995; dYdewalle & Van de Poel, 1999), reversed subtitling
(native language in soundtrack and foreign language in subtitles) generally leads to more
incidental language acquisition than standard subtitling (native language in subtitles and
foreign language in soundtrack). A vocabulary acquisition superiority of reversed
subtitling was also found in similar studies where the participants were explicitly
instructed to learn the foreign language (Holobow, Lambert, & Sayegh, 1984; Lambert,
Boehler, & Sidoti, 1981; Lambert & Holobow, 1984).
Mastering a foreign language implies the acquisition of grammar, beyond just
vocabulary. Contrary to vocabulary acquisition, previous studies (dYdewalle &
Pavakanun, 1997; dYdewalle & Van de Poel, 1999) failed to detect grammar
acquisition. The experiments typically involved a 3 3 design. The first independent
variable was the language of the subtitles: subtitles in a foreign language or in a native
language, or no subtitles. Similarly, the language in the soundtrack was foreign language
or native language, or there was no soundtrack. After showing the movie in one of the
nine conditions, a language test followed. To assess grammar acquisition, performance
in conditions with foreign language either in subtitles or in the soundtrack (or both)
was compared with performance in conditions where foreign language had not been
presented. Accordingly, the movie (without foreign language) was also shown in the
control conditions, potentially inflating the performance level simply by guessing the
accurate answers from the content of the movie. In order to assess the amount of
incidental learning of the grammatical rules, both experiments of the present study
included a condition with no movie.
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Foreign-grammar acquisition 245

Ellis and Laporte (1997) distinguished implicit learning and explicit-selective

learning, the former proceeding incidentally and unconsciously, and the latter
intentionally and consciously through searching for hidden rules in the data.
The beneficial nature of implicit versus explicit language learning is a matter of dispute
which can be summarized into two positions, the interface and non-interface positions.
The interface position suggests a strong interaction between implicit and explicit
knowledge: implicit knowledge originates in explicit knowledge, therefore, the
construction of explicit knowledge is of great importance in acquiring language.
According to earlier interface theories, implicit knowledge results from automatizing
explicit knowledge (e.g. McLaughlin, 1978).
The various versions of the ACT model (Adaptive Control of Thought, for its most
recent version, see Anderson, 1993; Anderson & Lebiere, 1998) elaborated the interface
position. Implementing the information-processing approach, Anderson (1982) defined
learning as the transformation of declarative knowledge into procedural knowledge.
Conscious solutions for specific problems are compiled, and general procedures are
composed and further optimized. The resulting procedural knowledge is applied fast and
beyond conscious control. This theory of cognitive skill acquisition incorporates language
acquisition (see Chapter 7 in Anderson, 1983). Anderson (1987, p. 192) claimed that all
varieties of skill acquisition, including those typically regarded as inductive, conform to
this characterization and has been exemplified in language acquisition (Anderson, 1976,
1981). De Bot (1996) further specified the mechanisms of ACT in language production.
On the other hand, the non-interface position rules out the transformation of explicit
knowledge into implicit knowledge (Ellis, 1993; Paradis, 1994). The non-interface view
originated in Krashens (1981, 1985) distinction between language learning and
language acquisition. Language learning is evoked by the formal setting of explicit
instruction, resulting in explicit knowledge of the language rules. True language
competence, on the other hand, is obtained through language acquisition, activated by
naturalistic and informal exposure, and producing implicit knowledge. The learned and
the acquired systems coexist strictly independently, without any implicit knowledge
emerging from explicit knowledge. Explicit learning thus has a rather small impact on
competence (Krashen, 1999).
Hulstijn (2002) pointed out that a non-interface position does not necessarily
underestimate the value of explicit learning: even if explicit knowledge does not
transform into implicit knowledge, it can be of great help in language acquisition by
providing opportunities for implicit learning. Implicit learning takes place automatically
during listening, speaking, reading, and writing, whether one explicitly focuses on
language learning or not. That is, language learning is not determined by the type
of input (formal vs. informal). Pienemann (1998) also acknowledged the importance
of explicit learning, provided that the grammatical and computational complexities to
be learned do not exceed the limited capacity of the human mind (i.e. its processability).
Also, the early stages of acquisition may especially benefit from the instruction to attend
to meaning and thus connect form with meaning (VanPatten, 1997). And regardless of
implicit, explicit, or meaning-oriented processing of input, acquiring or even noticing
certain language forms may be needed for language production (De Bot, 1996; Izumi,
2003; Izumi, Bigelow, Fujiwara, & Fearnow, 1999).
Advance knowledge of the rules may also contribute to subsequent acquisition
of similar but not-presented rules. This would be consistent with the ACTs assumption
of implicit and explicit knowledge to be interwoven. Overlap between an acquired
procedure and a to-be-acquired procedure reduces the necessary amount of compilation
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246 Sven Van Lommel et al.

and the working memory load, thus enhancing ensuing acquisition of the related skill
(Anderson, 1987). The process of skill acquisition as transforming explicit knowledge
into optimized implicit knowledge facilitates acquisition of new but related knowledge.
However, the more extreme non-interface viewpoint (Krashen, 1981, 1985) dismisses
any interface between implicit and explicit knowledge and excludes advanced
knowledge to influence subsequent implicit learning.
With regards to age differences in second-language acquisition, several studies have
offered a maturational account and suggest that a critical period limits both primary- and
second-language acquisition (see Long, 1990, for a comprehensive review). Although
evidence in favour of a critical period for second-language acquisition has been reported
(for an overview, see Harley & Wang, 1997; Skehan, 1998), the evidence remains yet
disputed. Particularly damaging for the critical period hypothesis and its maturational
account is the frequently reported postmaturational age effect (Bialystok & Hakuta,
1994, 1999; Bialystok & Miller, 1999; Birdsong, 1992; Birdsong & Molis, 2001; Flege,
1999; Snow & Hoefnagel-Hohle, 1978): Second-language attainment negatively
correlates with age of learning even if learning commences after the presumed end
of the critical period (i.e. beyond approximately 12 years of age).
Given an informal context, younger children were expected to outperform older
children in acquiring a foreign language. The greater cognitive development of older
children calls for the opposite expectation. Most theories expect older children and
adults to take more advantage of explicit instruction, compared with younger children.
According to Krashen (1981, 1985), for example, older children will be better language
learners, whereas younger children are better equipped for the informal contexts
language. Younger childrens head start on older children was expected to be restricted
to a naturalistic context; with explicit instruction, older children will show more
learning than younger children (Lamendella, 1977; Patkowski, 1980; Singleton, 1995).
Cognitive approaches also lead to the same considerations (McLaughlin, 1981; Skehan,
1998). ACT, however, generalized the explicit-to-implicit learning theory to child
development without expressing explicitly a disadvantage of younger children.
Anderson (1987, p. 206) stated that his learning theory is intended to generalize
downward to child development.
In the present paper, intentional learning refers to conditions where participants are
instructed to learn as a function of an upcoming test, leading to explicit knowledge.
According to the interface position, the explicit knowledge facilitates the acquisition of
implicit knowledge of related information. The extreme non-interface position
emphasizes the independent acquisition and coexistence of explicit and implicit
knowledge. In incidental learning, instructions do not refer to learning and the
subsequent test is unexpected; accordingly, there is only acquisition of implicit
knowledge. The present distinctions between intentional- versus incidental-learning as
well as between explicit versus implicit knowledge are in agreement with dYdewalle
(1996) where a more detailed description of the distinctions is provided.
Experiment 1 examined the acquisition of grammar when no reference is made to an
upcoming language test (i.e. incidental learning). Accordingly, a better performance
from the younger children was expected. Experiment 2 examined intentional learning.
In the intentional learning condition, participants were explicitly instructed to draw
attention to the foreign-language soundtrack and to the endings of the words especially,
in order to identify in what way a movie could help in acquiring the grammar of the
foreign language. Here, older children will show superior grammar learning, particularly
when the rules are presented in advance.
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Foreign-grammar acquisition 247

To empirically evaluate the interface and non-interface positions, half of the

participants in both experiments of the present study received the foreign-language
rules in advance, and foreign-language test items included items on the rules as
presented in advance as well as items on not-given rules, but to be discovered in the
language as it is presented in the movie. All items in the foreign-language test assessed
rules that had frequently been applied in the movie. Implicit knowledge is assumed to
be more involved on the items of not-presented rules. With intentional learning, the
interface position predicts a better performance on all items as explicit knowledge
(acquired through intentional learning) improves implicit knowledge.

EXPERIMENT 1
Experiment 1 investigated whether grammar rules of a foreign language are acquired
through watching a subtitled movie. To increase the likelihood of grammar acquisition,
reversed subtitling (native language in soundtrack, foreign language in subtitles) was
used: preceding studies have shown more vocabulary acquisition with reversed than
with standard subtitling. The artificial language Esperanto, known for its simplicity and
small number of rules and irregularities, served as foreign language. To test for true rule
acquisition instead of simply remembering the sentences from the movie, the grammar
test comprised old items that literally appeared in the movie as well as new items that
did not appear in the movie, but were examples of the same rule. For half of the
participants, the rules were presented the day before watching the movie.

Method
Participants
A group of 62 (34 females and 28 males) sixth-graders from a primary school and 47
(32 females and 15 males) sixth-graders from a secondary school volunteered to
participate in the experiment; all were from the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium.
According to the countrys educational system, the average sixth-grader of a primary
school is aged 11 years, and the average sixth-grader of a secondary school is aged 17 years.

Materials
De premiejager (The Bounty Hunter), a Dutch spoken 25-minute cartoon of Lucky
Luke, was subtitled in Esperanto in accordance with the 6-s rule (which is optimal for
the viewer, see dYdewalle, Van Rensbergen, & Pollet, 1987): that is, a subtitle of the
maximum length (64 characters spread over two lines) is presented for 6-s, and shorter
subtitles are time-scheduled proportionally. Sentences longer than 64 characters are
shortened by omitting non-essential parts, such as names (and replacing them by
pronouns), exclamations, or unimportant adjectives.
A story about Esperanto was constructed. It described the historical roots of the
language and why it has been developed. The story (approximately 350 words long) was
used to introduce five Esperanto grammar rules (see Appendix A). The introduction
(also about 350 words long) explained the undefined article and the endings of
the nominative singular and plural of the substantive, the nominative singular of the
adjective, and the present tense.
To assess the acquisition of Esperanto grammar, a test was constructed for the five
Esperanto rules. The five rules, as applied in the sentences of the subtitles, occurred
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248 Sven Van Lommel et al.

frequently in the movie (see frequency of occurrence in Appendix A). The test contained
40 multiple-choice items, eight per grammar rule. For each item, the participants had to
decide which one of four alternatives correctly translated a Dutch sentence into
Esperanto. For example, hij is een eerlijk man (he is a honest man) ! Li estas une
honesta viro, Li estas un honesta viro, Li estas la honesta viro, and Li estas honesta
viro. To exclude the use of lexical cues, the alternatives all existed in Esperanto. For half
of all items, the correct alternative had literally appeared in the movie, while it had not
appeared for the other items. The former items were called old items; the latter were
called new items. All participants received the same random order of the test items.

Procedure
The school classes (approximately 15 pupils) defined the experimental groups. Every
combination between the variables movie (with vs. without) and advance rule
presentation (with vs. without) was carried out separately for the primary and
secondary school groups. Within the two age groups, conditions were randomly
assigned to classroom. Including gender as an additional independent variable was
impossible since not all classes were gender mixed.
The most comprehensive condition included the Esperanto story as well as the
presentation of the five grammar rules on the first day, and the movie on the next day.
On the first day, the experimenter requested the cooperation of the children and started
telling the Esperanto story. The Esperanto rules were presented; their presentation
occurred in an occasional and incidental manner, to prevent any intention towards
studying them. The rules were explained and verbally exercised under the cover of clari-
fying the scope of the Esperanto language. There was neither any cue to study the grammar
nor any indication of an upcoming test. In the conditions without advance rule pre-
sentation, the Esperanto story did not include the introduction of the five grammar rules.
The following day the experimenter invited the class to silently and attentively watch
a movie. The movie was played by means of the television set and video player available
in the schools. In half of the conditions, no movie was presented.
Participants with the movie received the movie as part of a school project on movie
viewing, without further explanation, and no reference was made to the subtitling in
the movie; they were informed about the language in the subtitles only after watching
the movie. They then all received the grammar test in which they were to indicate the
correct translation from Dutch into Esperanto. The test was self-paced; it never
exceeded 30 minutes. At the end of the experiment, the participants were informed
about the real purpose of the experiment.

Results
An ANOVA was carried out with age (primary vs. secondary schools), advance rule
presentation (with vs. without), and movie (either presenting the movie or not) as
between-subjects variables, and with items (old vs. new) as a within-subjects variable.
Except movie, the three other main effects are significant. However, all main effects are
involved in significant higher-order interactions.
Older participants (M 0:65) perform better than younger participants (M 0:43),
F1; 101 60:853, MSE 0.206, p , :0001, h2p :380, and presenting the Esperanto
rules beforehand improves performance of all participants (M 0:33 and .75 without
and with the rules, respectively), F1; 101 227:175, MSE 0.206, p , :0001,
h2p :692.
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Foreign-grammar acquisition 249

Presenting the rules beforehand enhanced the performance of the secondary school
children considerably more than the improvement of the primary school children,
producing a significant first-order interaction with age and advance rule presentation,
F1; 101 13:065, MSE 0.206, p , :0005, h2p :115. All means which are involved
in the interaction differ from each other significantly (p , :02 at least, HSD tests). We do
not provide the means as they are involved in a significant second-order interaction
including this time also movie, F1; 101 4:261, MSE 0.206, p , :05, h2p :041.
Figure 1 describes the means which are involved in the interaction. Despite involving
three factors, the basic pattern of the interaction is easy to grasp. When the rules are not
presented beforehand, watching the movie does not improve performance. When the
rules are presented, performance of the primary school children improves slightly after
having watched the movie than without movie (p , :07, HSD test). This marginally
significant effect of movie, however, is totally absent among the older children. It is also
important to note that there is no performance improvement after watching the movie
but not receiving the rules; clearly, watching the movie does not in itself produce
acquisition.
However, the absence of a direct effect of movie needs to be qualified. Participants
clearly better perform on the items which were included in the movie,
F1; 101 4:117, MSE 0.044, p , :05, h2p :039, but obviously only when they
watched the movie (M 0:59 and 0.53, p , :05, HSD) leading to a significant interaction
between items and movie, F1; 101 6:431, MSE 0.044, p , :02, h2p :060. With
no movie, there is no significant difference between old and new items (M 0:51 and
0.52; ns, HSD).

EXPERIMENT 2
Experiment 1 barely showed any direct rule/grammar acquisition following the
presentation of a movie. The better performance on old items after watching the movie
could simply be due to a literal recollection of the sentences as presented in the movie.
Moreover, the rule/grammar acquisition due to movie presentation was only marginally
significant among the children that had previously received the rules; the same effect
could not be observed among the older children, perhaps due to a ceiling of their
performance level (see Fig. 1).
Experiment 2 was an attempt to further clarify the reliability of the age difference.
While Experiment 1 demonstrated a strong beneficial effect of the advance presentation
of the rules in an incidental learning context, Experiment 2 manipulated the instructions
at the onset of the movie presentation: The instructions for half of the participants told to
look for rules as applied in the movie while no reference to the rules was made for the
other participants. Also, test items included items that apply the rules as presented in
advance to half of the participants as well as items that represent rules which had not yet
been introduced. Finally, we abandoned the reversed subtitling presentation, a somewhat
artificial situation, and used standard subtitling (Esperanto in the soundtrack and the
native language in the subtitle).

Method
Partcipants
A group of 94 (39 females and 55 males), sixth-graders from four primary schools, and 84
(40 females and 44 males) sixth-graders from four secondary schools volunteered
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250 Sven Van Lommel et al.

Figure 1. Proportion correct answers among the younger and older children, as a function of advance
rule and movie presentations (Experiment 1).

to participate in the experiment. The schools were from Dutch-speaking part of

Belgium, and were not involved in Experiment 1.

Materials
A 40-minute Esperanto movie, called En Somera Vilao, was subtitled in Dutch according
to the 6-s rule. To keep attention up, the movie was shortened to 16 minutes by omitting
all superfluous fragments (e.g. the nearly silent fragments which were unnecessary for the
overall comprehension of the movie). A story about Esperanto (297 words long; about
10 minutes in duration) served to introduce Esperanto grammar rules, in the same way as
in Experiment 1. In conditions with advance rule presentation, four rules were
introduced (368 words long; also about 10 minutes in duration).
The test assessed the participants knowledge of the four rules as given in the
Esperanto story (the endings of the present, past and future tense, as well as
the nominative singular of the substantive) as well as four not-presented rules (the ending
of the adverb and three endings in the declension of the adjective; see Appendix B).
Accordingly, one half of the items dealt with the rules as presented in advance (presented
rules), and the other half dealt with the other four rules (not-presented rules). Examples of
all rules occurred frequently in the movie (see frequency of occurrence in Appendix B).
The test contained 80 multiple-choice items (10 per grammar rule). As in Experiment 1,
the participants had to decide for each item which one of four alternatives correctly
translated a Dutch word or sentence into Esperanto; to exclude the use of lexical cues,
the alternatives differed in ending only and the incorrect endings all existed in Esperanto.
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Foreign-grammar acquisition 251

That is, all alternatives represented the same concept, but only one alternative consisted
of a grammatically correct word form and carried the ending corresponding to
the grammatical form of the Dutch word or sentence. For half of the items the correct
alternative had literally appeared in the movie (old item), while it had not appeared for
the other items (new item). An example of an old item: je merkt (you notice) !
Vi remarkis, Vi remarkis, Vi remarkus, and Vi remarkos; for a new item: dikwijls
(often) ! ofta, ofte, oftu, and ofto. This led to four types of items: presented
rule/old item, presented rule/new item, not-presented rule/old item, and not-presented
rule/new item. The items were sorted randomly insofar as no item was to contain relevant
cues for any subsequent item. The test was self-paced; it never exceeded 50 minutes.

Procedure
The primary as well as secondary school classes, each with about 15 pupils of both
genders, were used as a whole for each condition: every combination between the
variables advance rule presentation and movie instruction (either intentional,
incidental, or no movie) was carried out separately for a primary and a secondary
school group. Within the two age groups, conditions were randomly assigned to
classroom.
In the conditions where four Esperanto rules were presented in advance, the
experimenter introduced himself as investigating attitudes towards the use of
Esperanto. This was followed by the Esperanto story.
The following day the experimenter invited the class to silently and attentively watch
a movie. The movie was played by means of the television set and video player available
in the schools. The intentional instructions informed the participants of an upcoming
test that was to investigate in what way a movie could help in acquiring the grammar of a
foreign language. Attention was drawn especially to the endings of the Esperanto
soundtrack which were to be helpful in retrieving the Esperanto grammar.
The incidental instructions aimed at avoiding such an intention to learn: the participants
were merely asked to watch a movie about a writer finishing a book during vacation; no
remarks about the Esperanto language, its grammar, or the upcoming grammar test were
made. In the control condition, no movie or instructions were presented at this stage.
In conditions without advance rule presentation, the four grammar rules were
simply left out of the Esperanto story.
Finally, all participants received the same rule/grammar test. In the intentional
condition, participants were requested to apply the acquired Esperanto rules.
The instruction in the incidental condition did not refer to Esperanto rules: the
alternatives were said to be all correct translations of a Dutch word or sentence into
another language; the participants were asked simply to guess which alternative was
most Esperanto-like. In the control condition, the participants were to find the correct
translation from Dutch into Esperanto.
At the end of the experiment, the participants were informed about the real purpose
of the experiment.

Results
An ANOVA on the proportion of correct choices on the test was carried out with items
(old vs. new) and rules (presented vs. not-presented) within participants, and with age,
advance rule presentation (with vs. without), and instructions (intentional and
incidental vs. no movie) as between-subjects variables. A large number of significant
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252 Sven Van Lommel et al.

main- and first-order interactions are obtained; however, the significant main- and first-
order interactions are all included in three significant second-order interactions which
will be presented here in detail.
The significant interaction between age, advance rule presentation, and items,
F1; 166 8:794, MSE 0.036, p , :004, h2p :050, is mainly due to a weaker effect
of advance rule presentation with young children than with older children. Young
children do better with than without advance rule presentation (M 0:33and 0.26,
respectively), F1; 166 6:738, MSE 0.208, p , :02, h2p :039; older children do
much better with than without advance rule presentation (M 0:45 and 0.29,
respectively), F1; 166 37:813, MSE 0.208, p , :0001, h2p :186. Without
advance rule presentation, young and older children perform about at the same level
(M 0:26 and 0.29, respectively; ns); however, with advance rule presentation, older
children showed more correct choices than the young children (M 0:45 and 0.33,
respectively), F1; 166 21:083, MSE 0.208, p , :0001, h2p :113. The difference
between old and new items as a function of age and advance rule presentation is always
small (not significant, a posteriori Tukey-HSD test) and inconsistent.
Age advance rule presentation also interacts significantly with the presented/not-
presented rule, F1; 166 9:348, MSE 0.201, p , :003, h2p :053. There is no
effect of age, advance rule presentation, and their interaction on not-presented rules; all
averages are close to .25 which reflects guessing choice among the four alternatives for
each item. On items about presented rules, young children do better with than without
advance rule presentation (M 0:41and 0.28, respectively), F1; 166 10:528,
MSE 0.272, p , :002, h2p :060; older children do much better with advance rule
presentation than without (M 0:65 and 0.32, respectively), F1; 166 64:206,
MSE 0.272, p , :0001, h2p :279. Without advance rule presentation, young and
older children perform on items of presented rules about at the same level (M 0:28
and 0.32, respectively; ns; both averages are also not significantly different from the 0.25
chance level); however, with advance rule presentation, the older children show more
correct choices than the young children (M 0:65 and 0.41, respectively),
F1; 166 32:373, MSE 0.272, p , :0001, h2p :163.
Advance rule presentation presented/not-presented rule finally also interacts
significantly with instructions, F2; 166 4:115, MSE 0.201, p , :02, h2p :024.
As apparent in Fig. 2, there is no affect of advance rule presentation, instructions/no
movie, and their interaction on not-presented rule items; all averages are close to 0.25.
As presented rules are not made available in the conditions without advance rule
presentation (and are thus on the same basis as new, not-presented rules), their averages
are also close to 0.25, and are never significantly higher than the averages on not-
presented rule items. On presented rule items, the same pattern emerges in the three
instruction conditions. Performance increases when there is advance rule presentation:
with intentional instructions (M 0:32 and 0.55), F1; 166 18:811, MSE 0.272,
p , :0001, h2p :102; with incidental instruction (M 0:31 and 0.43),
F1; 166 7:783, MSE 0.272, p , :006, h2p :045; and when there was no
movie shown (M 0:27 and 0.61), F1; 166 41:014, MSE 0.272, p , :0001,
h2p .198. Without advance rule presentation, performance on presented rule items in
the three conditions is about at the same level, F , 1. With advance rule presentation,
there is a performance difference on the presented rule items, F2; 166 7:815,
MSE 0.201, p , :0006, h2p :086. Performance of the incidental condition
(M 0:43) is significantly lower (p , :05 in both cases, a posteriori Tukey-HSD test)
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Foreign-grammar acquisition 253

Figure 2. Proportion correct answers as a function of advance rule and movie presentations,
instructions and the nature of the rules (Experiment 2).

than in the intentional (M 0:55) and no movie (M 0:61) conditions; the last two
conditions do not differ significantly from each other.
It is important to mention that the pattern of findings, as described in the preceding
paragraph, does not change as a function of age; the interaction advanced rule
presentation presented/not-presented rules instructions, but including age, is not
significant, F , 1. Drawing Fig. 2 separately for the younger and older children produces
the same picture for the two groups.

GENERAL DISCUSSION
While there was reversed subtitling (foreign language in subtitles) in Experiment 1 and
standard subtitling (foreign language in soundtrack) in Experiment 2, the same basic
findings were obtained in the two experiments: no rule acquisition through the movie
only, and a strong effect of advance rule presentation, particularly among the older
children.
Previous studies did not reveal incidental grammar acquisition after watching
a foreign subtitled movie. However, the studies could be criticized by a number of
shortcomings in the design of the experiments. The two present experiments contained
a number of design improvements, for example, including control conditions without a
movie as well as inserting in the acquisition assessment old and new items (old items
literally were given in the movie while the new items implied applying the rules in
examples which were not presented in the movie). Notwithstanding the improvements,
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254 Sven Van Lommel et al.

simply watching the movie did not lead to an incidental acquisition of the rules in the
two experiments.
In Experiment 1, two findings could be interpreted as some evidence in favour of
rule acquisition by watching a movie. First, performance of the primary school children
improved slightly more after having watched the movie than without movie when the
rules were presented in advance (see Fig. 1). However, the effect was only marginally
significant, and did not appear in the comparable conditions of Experiment 2. Second,
the young and older children were clearly better on the old items (items which were
included in the movie) after watching the movie. However, a similar effect did not
emerge in the new items, suggesting that the participants did acquire grammar by
watching the movie, causing a better performance on the old items of which the correct
answer had literally appeared in the movie: the better performance on the old items was
simply due to remembering literally what was presented in the subtitles of the movie
and was not based on applying the rules. The correct answers on the new items had not
appeared in the movie and thus required the use of induced grammar rules but no
increase in performance on the new items was detected.
Experiment 2 displayed more clear-cut results about rule acquisition with a movie.
All performance averages in conditions without advance rule presentation were at, or
close to chance level, either with or without movie presentation. When the rules were
presented in advance (presented rules), performance on items where the presented
rules were to be applied were best when no movie had been watched (see Fig. 2).
Inserting a movie between the advance rule presentation and the test increased the
retention interval and may have caused some interference, leading to more forgetting of
the presented rules.
In both experiments, performance improved considerably when the rules were
presented in advance. The improvement was equally strong with the old and new items
(there was no significant interaction between the nature of the items and advance rule
presentation; in both experiments, F , 1). This means that presenting the rules in
advance affected not only correct choices on items which appeared in the movie
(old items) but also allowed applying those rules to new items; clearly, the presented
rules were acquired at a level allowing also their application on new cases.
According to a strong interface view (e.g. Anderson, 1993; Anderson & Lebiere,
1998), explicit rule learning is of great importance in further acquiring new, related
rules (i.e. not-presented rules in Experiment 2). In Experiment 2, there was no such
evidence. As can be seen in Fig. 2, performance on items where not-presented rules
were to be applied was at chance level without advance rule presentation; but also with
advance rule presentation, performance on the same not-presented items assessing not-
presented rules remained at chance level.
We predicted a superior performance of the younger children in the incidental
condition; however, older children were to show better language learning when the
rules were presented in advance, and particularly when intentional instructions to learn
were provided. Only one part of the predictions was confirmed in both experiments:
advanced rule presentation was clearly more beneficial among the older children than
among the younger children. Separate analyses of variance on the incidental conditions
in both experiments failed to show the predicted better performance of the younger
children; similarly, an ANOVA on the data of the intentional condition of Experiment 2
showed no better performance of the older children.
Both experiments here did not provide evidence for grammar acquisition. Grammar,
contrary to vocabulary, may be too complicated to acquire from a rather short movie
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Foreign-grammar acquisition 255

presentation. Upheld attention and sufficient motivation are necessary and basic
ingredients for foreign-language grammar learning to occur, even in real-life situations
(Harding & Riley, 1986). Moreover, grammar acquisition may remain minimal without
verbal production of the to-be-acquired language forms (De Bot, 1996; Izumi, 2003;
Izumi et al., 1999). For instance, acquiring less salient rules incidentally requires
exercise instead of merely observation (Berry, 1991). Anderson (1987) also stated that
successful execution of productions is needed, to strengthen and finalise the implicit
procedural knowledge. Also, our participants were not instructed to attend to meaning,
potentially a precondition for grammar acquisition (VanPatten, 1997).
Grammatical complexity was taken into consideration in the manipulation of rule
presentation in Experiment 2. According to Pienemann (1998), acquisition of less
complex lexical flexion in conjugation and (nominative) noun declension is required
for the processability of phrasal and inter-phrasal flexion in adjective and adverb
declension. Therefore in Experiment 2, Esperanto verb and (nominative) noun rules
were presented in advance, to enable and possibly also to enhance subsequent
acquisition of other (adjective and adverb) rules (see strong interface view in Anderson,
1993; Anderson & Lebiere, 1998). However, this concern for complexity caused a
confound between rule presentation and rule type in Experiment 2: The less complex
presented rules were verbs and nouns, often obligatory sentence components, whereas
the more complex not-presented rules were adjectives and adverbs, mostly optional
modifiers. Consequently, presented rules may have been far more dominantly present in
the movie. Such imbalance did not show up in the frequency of occurrence in the movie
(158 occurrences of presented rules vs. 151 occurrences of not-presented rules,
see Appendix B). However, the saliency of the obligatory sentence components may
have detracted attention from the not-presented rules, thus preventing acquisition of
not-presented rules which any way were more difficult to acquire.
One could also argue that vocabulary acquisition (as clearly demonstrated in our
previous studies) is a first and necessary step to acquire grammar. One of the
assumptions of the lexical-approach theory (Lewis, 1993; Long, 1996) is that language
consists of grammaticalized lexis, not lexicalized grammar; that is, learners do not first
acquire rules, and then vocabulary to apply it to. Rather, they learn collections of
complex but initially unanalysed chunks of language, which they then progressively
analyse, and thus extract grammatical regularities. From this perspective, students
learning of specific examples (i.e. the old items in the two experiments) could be
seen, not just as vocabulary acquisition, but also as the foundation for later acquisition
of grammatical rules. If grammar acquisition is a gradual process of extracting
regularities from memorized vocabulary and phrases, a sequence of several movies,
spread over a longer period of time, could provide evidence that vocabulary acquisition
due to subtitled television programmes can be supplemented with grammar
acquisition.

Acknowledgements
Experiment 1 was carried out by the second author and Experiment 2 by the first author, both as
part of their licence thesis, under supervision of the third author and submitted to the University
of Leuven, Belgium. Sven Van Lommel is currently research assistant at the Fund for Scientific
Research-Flanders. We thank Lies Sercu and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments
and suggestions on an earlier version of this article.
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256 Sven Van Lommel et al.

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Received 29 January 2004; revised version received 30 November 2004

Appendix A
Esperanto rules in Experiment 1 and their occurrence in the movie

Rule 1. A noun (singular) has the ending o (occurrence in movie 225)

Rule 2. To form the plural of a noun, add the ending j (occurrence in movie 57)
Rule 3. Adjectives end in a (occurrence in movie 143)
Rule 4. There is no indefinite article [English a, an]; there is only a definite article la,
alike for all genders, cases and numbers [English the] (occurrence in
movie 53)
Rule 5. Present time of verbs takes the ending as (occurrence in movie 158)

Appendix B
Esperanto rules in Experiment 2 and their occurrence in the movie

Presented rules

Rule 1. Present time of verbs takes the ending as (occurrence in movie 28)
Rule 2. Past tense of verbs takes the ending is (occurrence in movie 30)
Rule 3. Future tense of verbs takes the ending os (occurrence in movie 25)
Rule 4. A noun (singular) has the ending o (occurrence in movie 75)

Not-presented rules

Rule 1. Nominative adjectives end in a (occurrence in movie 33)

Rule 2. Accusative adjectives end in an (occurrence in movie 27)
Rule 3. Adverbs end in e (occurrence in movie 70)
Rule 4. Singular adjectives alone (e.g. in statements) end in a (occurrence in
movie 21)
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