ERIC Number: EJ1484844
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025
Pages: 17
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1927-5250
EISSN: EISSN-1927-5269
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Reversed Subtitling: The Most Frequent Multiword Expressions in English-Subtitled Mandarin Dramas
Wenhua Hsu
Journal of Education and Learning, v14 n5 p40-56 2025
The drama fever has been riding high with consumer usage of over-the-top (OTT) streaming services on the rise and the prevalence of mobile devices with Internet connectivity. The researcher-teacher sometimes overhears her students chatting about the drama series they binge-watch. Given this binge-watching phenomenon on college campuses in Taiwan, where Mandarin is an official language and English as a foreign language (EFL) is a required course, the researcher-teacher is concerned about English lexical growth if Taiwanese students' viewing habits shift from Mandarin to English subtitles. Deriving from Mandarin drama English subtitles, the researcher sought to create a list of the most frequent multiword expressions for students to learn because drama lines are often drawn from daily life and even reflect current events. A corpus of 8.46 million English-subtitled words from 50 Mandarin dramas across different genres was compiled, totaling 1,427 episodes. Based on frequency, dispersion and expert judgments, a total of 475 frequent multiword expressions were selected. Pedagogical implications and directions for future research are also discussed in the study.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Word Frequency, Captions, English (Second Language), Mandarin Chinese, Popular Culture, Television Viewing, Language Patterns
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Taiwan
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A

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