Do you watch English movies to improve your English? Then think about the subtitles. In a study, Dutch students watched English videos with a strong accent. Some had English subtitles, some had Dutch subtitles, and some had none.

Later, the students with English subtitles understood the accent best. The students with Dutch subtitles did worse than those with no subtitles on new sentences. So try English subtitles, even for just one scene.

Watching foreign dramas is a popular way to learn English, but the language of the subtitles may matter a lot. In 2009, Mitterer and McQueen in the Netherlands showed Dutch university students, who already knew English fairly well, videos with Scottish or Australian accents. The students watched with English subtitles, Dutch subtitles, or no subtitles.

Afterward, they listened to the same accent and repeated what they heard. The English-subtitle group did best, and the Dutch-subtitle group did worse than the no-subtitle group on new sentences. With English subtitles, learners can match sounds to written words. With subtitles in their own language, learners get the story from the text, but the written words do not match the English sounds.

Many learners watch foreign films to improve their listening, but research suggests that the choice of subtitles can either support or undermine that goal. In a 2009 experiment in the Netherlands, Mitterer and McQueen exposed Dutch university students with reasonable English to videos featuring unfamiliar Scottish or Australian accents.

Participants watched with English subtitles, Dutch subtitles, or no subtitles, and then repeated sentences spoken in the same accent, including lines they had not heard before. Those who had seen English subtitles performed best, while those who had seen Dutch subtitles performed worse than viewers without subtitles on new lines. The authors argued that same-language subtitles help listeners link unfamiliar sounds to known words, allowing their perception to adjust, whereas native-language subtitles supply word forms that clash with the sounds.

A 2013 meta-analysis likewise found that captions support listening and vocabulary learning, although it mainly compared captions with no captions rather than with native-language subtitles. Important limits remain. The 2009 study measured adaptation to specific accents after a single short viewing, not general listening ability, and its participants were already proficient. Learners also need sufficient vocabulary; one analysis estimated that understanding 95 percent of television dialogue requires about 3,000 word families.