Methods used when analysing the results from the study

The results from the study were first analysed in terms of what country and mode group the students belonged to. Secondly, the results were analysed in terms of what school and mode group the students belonged to. This provided information about whether the schools and the students’ proficiency skills had any influence on the results.

Following this, the results from the test were finally analysed in terms of whether the students belonged to the subtitled, the dubbed, or the original group, regardless of what country or school they belonged to. Thus, the results of the Norwegian and the Austrian students who watched the subtitled mode of the film clip were placed in one group to be further analysed. The same applied to the dubbed and the original groups. Furthermore, based on the self- assessment test they had to participate in beforehand, these groups were also divided into smaller groups in which the test scores of the students who shared similar self-assessment scores were compared and analysed. By comparing the results of the students who shared the same assessment scores, the analysis became more in-depth and the results more reliable. This is because the self-assessment scores placed the students of equal proficiency level in similar groups. In doing so, the subtitled groups, which consisted of five different assessment levels, were compared to the similar assessment groups within the dubbed and the original groups, which would in return give a more reliable result than comparing for example A2 level students with C1 level students. See figure 3 for an overview of the analysis method. It must be once again emphasised that these self-assessment scores may not completely reflect students’ actual competence level.

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Figure 3: Method of self-assessment analysis

Figure 3 Method of self-assessment analysis. Results are analysed in terms of country and mode, school and mode, and assessment scores and mode.

3.6 Summary

This chapter has discussed details of the present research. It has provided a description of the participants, materials, and procedures used to carry out the study. In addition, the last section concerned the methods used to analyse the results from the self-assessment task and the study.

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4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the various results gained through the survey and the study. As mentioned in chapter three, the survey consisted of a questionnaire with 20 questions that the students were requested to answer. The purpose of the questionnaire was to identify what attitudes Norwegian and Austrian students have towards English language learning, and what attitudes they have regarding the use of the subtitled mode, the dubbed mode, and the original mode in film and television series. A secondary purpose was also to find out how they self- assessed their own English proficiency skills. In regards to the study, the students watched The Simpsons Movie with either of the modes, prior to receiving a multiple-choice test consisting of 24 words that the students had to translate into their L1 (see appendices E and F for a detailed list of the words). The results from the study were analysed in terms of country, classes, and self-assessment groups in order to see whether the subtitled groups would obtain a higher score on the vocabulary test than the dubbed and the original groups. If the subtitled groups achieve a higher score than the other groups, this can be interpreted as an indication that the students are able to recall, and possibly acquire, English vocabulary through the use of subtitled films.

In this chapter, there are 23 diagrams included. 14 of these diagrams refer to questions from the questionnaire whereas 5 concern the study. The questions from the questionnaire that are not as relevant to the research questions and hypotheses are not included in this chapter. The titles for each of the diagrams concerning the questionnaire include the number(s) of the question(s) the diagram refers to. The questionnaire is included in appendix G. Results from the questionnaire are presented and discussed in section 4.1, and results from the study are presented and subsequently discussed in section 4.2. As previously stated, the results that are analysed only include scores from students who have not been disqualified from the study, on the basis of the requirements mentioned in chapter three. Those who have requested that their data shall be removed from the analysis were also excluded from the study.

The number of respondents was 123 from Norway and 89 from Austria, giving 212 tokens in total. On the basis of the number of participants, and in regard to the school types that participated in the study, the findings can be considered significant. They can also be considered representative of the general public since this research has included a bilingual and a multicultural school, which has given some variety to the results. However, in this study, the results cannot be generalised across all school types since many of the students at the bilingual school in Austria have been highly exposed to English, whilst many of the students in the

58 multicultural school in Norway have had insufficient exposure to English. Moreover, the schools in Norway were also quite demographically close to each other. Due to this, the results obtained from the multiple-choice test and the questionnaire are not treated as statistically significant. Instead, because there were more Norwegian students who participated in this study than Austrians, the results from the questionnaire and the multiple-choice test are presented as mean scores.