Extensive viewing of children’s entertainment and the potential for incidental learning of early years reading vocabulary: a corpus study

Abstract

This study evaluates the potential for incidentally learning early reading vocabulary through the extensive viewing (EV) of children’s movies/television with subtitles. Recent research has investigated how much exposure to important vocabulary EV and extensive reading (ER) provides. Investigations compute the number of repetitions of target vocabulary in corpora designed to represent EV/ER. Curriculum time estimates are then computed based on the time needed to reach vocabulary repetition thresholds linked to incidental learning. This study focuses on an understudied area of EV, namely children’s transition to literacy. It investigates whether early reading vocabulary is available in children’s movies/television, a form of compelling, comprehensible input. Recent research has found vocabulary acquisition gains from EV are enhanced by subtitles. Therefore, this study analyses 743 subtitles from children’s movies (4.8 million words) and 3174 subtitles from children’s series (6.4 million words). Using two recent wordlists representing early reading vocabulary, vocabulary frequency and approximate curriculum time estimates are computed for three thresholds linked to incidental vocabulary acquisition, i.e. 6, 12 and 20 encounters. Results indicate that EV with subtitles could support the development of an oral language vocabulary that contains a pool of words needed for early reading, and provide print exposure to this essential vocabulary.