Movie subtitles reading skills of elementary school children.

Abstract

Background: the abilities of school children for reading static texts have been widely discussed, however little is known about how well they can read dynamic texts and what skills are required for this kind of reading.

Aim: to evaluate the skills involved in reading movie subtitles of 2nd and 4th graders of students at the a public school.

Method: analysis of the level and skills needed for movie subtitles reading, through the retelling of a section of a movie watched individually by 60 students, 30 2nd graders and 30 4th graders matched for age and gender, with no sound and with subtitles.

Results: there were no significant differences in the level of school literacy between students of the different school grades. Considering the skills and the subtitles reading level, 4th graders presented a significant better performance when compared to the 2nd graders. Fourth graders presented skills related to the levels of literal comprehension and independent comprehension, whereas 2nd graders where mostly at the decoding level.

Conclusion: 2nd graders are at the textual decoding level of movie subtitles, while 4th graders are at the literal comprehension level of movie subtitles. This indicates that schooling has an influence on the reading of movie subtitles. However, the school literacy literacy was not a significant factor for movie subtitles reading.