An overview of audiovisual input as a means for foreign language acquisition in different contexts

Abstract

Traditional media, such as television and cinema, provide rich audiovisual input that is conducive to language acquisition, as research in the field has shown. This includes contexts where learner-viewers are exposed to a foreign language without subtitles, as well as when exposure occurs using subtitles in their different modalities—interlingual and intralingual. The aim of this review article is to source information from different contexts to explore the extent to which incidental foreign language acquisition occurs through input, identifying how specific linguistic competences benefit from it. The main questions that will be addressed regard age and cognateness, when exposure to foreign audiovisual input occurs both in the absence and in the presence of foreign language learning. Some brief considerations will be forwarded in relation to the impact of dubbing and of recent technological developments on language acquisition.