Subtitling for language acquisition: Eye tracking as predictor of attention allocation in education

This paper focuses on the cognitive effectiveness of watching subtitled discipline-specific videos to determine how subtitling, as an emerging technology, encourages language equity, social justice, and the rise of technomultilinguialism. Cognitive effectiveness is investigated using gaze duration in eye-tracking as a proxy for attention allocation and gist comprehension together with scene and word recognition. It also considers whether academic English subtitles permit students enough time to look at both on-screen images and text. This study uses eye-tracking data from seven student participants in the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Pretoria. The students were offered subtitles in English, Afrikaans, isiZulu, and Sepedi. However, the participants who volunteered for the study selected largely English and Afrikaans subtitles, and the isiZulu and Sepedi subtitles were unfortunately not utilised during this particular study. This paper concludes that the participants preferred English subtitles and remembered certain concepts from the videos better when their focus was on the subtitles themselves rather than exclusively on the on-screen image.