We see that vocabulary acquisition is one important branch of second language acquisition (SLA). To some degree, the extent of one’s vocabulary indicates the degree of his/her language level. But the process of second language vocabulary acquisition is very tedious for learners and meanwhile increasing the affective filters prevents intentional vocabulary learning, since a learner reads difficult classical texts with the aim of increasing his/her knowledge of vocabulary and draws a conscious attention to the learning of new words in the text. Among the cognitive activities, watching movies can enlarge learners’ vocabulary acquisition and understanding. In order to help second language learners increase their vocabulary, teachers have to provide quality teaching materials that will be engaging, interesting, and up to date while simultaneously being a tool that will confirm learning. Using English films in the EFL classroom is a relatively new idea. The scholars were familiarized with the concept since the 1970’s by the introduction of videotapes to the realm of ELT due to their various pedagogical advantages and values. Many scholars have revealed that English movies used in EFL classroom can become an important part of the curriculum which can help students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition (Barza & Memari, 2014). According to Hunt & Beglar (1998), there are three approaches to enhance vocabulary learning — incidental acquisition, intentional learning, and independent strategy development, among which incidental vocabulary acquisition is regarded as an essential part of vocabulary acquisition. Many scholars have agreed that much second language vocabulary acquisition is learned incidentally while learners are agreed inferring the meanings of unknown words (Huckin & Coady, 1999; Krashen, 1993; Paribakht & Wesche, 1997). As Nation (2001) defines, incidental vocabulary acquisition facilitates the process of vocabulary acquisition by the help of contacting with other cognitive exercises. Nagy, Herman, & Anderson (1985) declare that when incidental vocabulary acquisition is encouraged by the help of contact with a sufficient amount of written language exposure, incidental vocabulary acquisition can be substantial. In this respect, incidental acquisition should be emphasized in SLA, so that educators can use technological methods and materials which lead to incidental language acquisition to help motivate learners and remove part of the anxiety of not knowing the language. In this case, vocabulary acquisition which is called incidental acquisition is a byproduct rather than the explicit purpose of reading.源-自/吹冰+文,论`文'网]www.chuibin.com

Such results suggest that incidental vocabulary acquisition plays an important role in vocabulary acquisition and an English movie with suitable supporting components which fits the learner’s background information and language knowledge level in all directions can only make sense. Unfortunately, these researches do not generalize the effects of different elements on incidental vocabulary acquisition and have not been able to determine a best mode due to inpidual preference. Thus, our research questions on L2 vocabulary acquisition through watching films thus not only ask whether or not to use them, but also how to present captions and sounds and use suitable movies to aid comprehension with a considerate formula or comprehensive mode. It is still open to further demonstration and interpretations to promote L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition in an efficient way. Particularly, we will examine to what degree does watching English movies with or without captions have impact on incidental vocabulary acquisition of university students in addition to those explored by previous studies. Also, we will discuss previous results and ours in a functional framework concerning the differences in the relative impacts of watching movies of different sounds, genres and cultures on incidental vocabulary acquisition of university students. To push the boundary of the researches before, we will test the differentiation of acquiring target words from English movies with and without captions by experiment and analyze the aids of the clear and comfortable speech and the distinct characteristics of movies for university students with the same English level by deeper inpidual interview and finally give a new insight of achieving incidental vocabulary acquisition by watching English movies.