English movie dubbing and pronunciation intelligibility enhancement: Is it feasible in EFL courses?

Recently, technological development has been proven to be advantageous to English language teaching, which is beneficial to students. The integration of new technologies into English language classrooms has shown measurable advantages for students learning. In the hope of improving students’ pronunciation skills, the teacher researchers integrated Movie Dubbing activities into their EFL courses’ content. This quasi-experimental research conducted with freshmen from eight classes at a Japanese university investigated learners’ perceptions towards a Movie Dubbing Project and whether it impacted the intelligibility of their English pronunciation. The results show that most students found the Movie Dubbing Project enjoyable and that it boosted their motivation to learn. Results from post-intervention tests show that the intelligibility had improved; however, a marked improvement in the control group suggests that a Movie Dubbing Project is not the only factor explaining learners’ improved intelligibility scores. A much more rigorous investigation of the effectiveness of Movie Dubbing is therefore needed.