Same Language Subtitling of Music Video (SLS)

            SLS is the practice of subtitling the lyrics of song programs on video in the 'same' language as the audio as a repeated reading activity.  Technically, the approach is similar to Karaoke, the subtitles change color to match the audio track exactly (Kothari & Takeda 2000). There are, however, several important improvements on Karaoke. First, with Karaoke, the audio is slightly diluted and the vocal model is slowed or dropped completely reducing the impact of the audio model, and the choice of lyrics tends to fall in the lower reading-level ranges. With SLS, the audio is typically very dynamic with strong language modeling, and the instructor can choose lyrics or scripts at any reading level. Almost any dynamic audio-media can provide the base resource. This can be anything from a Broadway musical to a famous speech or poem. (Kothari, Takeda, Joshi& Pandey, 2002).  Further, teachers and/or students have the option of creating their own custom SLS presentations. This allows for a wide range of repetitive and rehearsed reading opportunities.

      Brij Kothari is currently studying the impact of SLS on illiterate and emergent level readers in India. His application is an experimental presentation format for mass consumption on public television. Basically, he takes popular movie music and adds strong subtitling and presents the product as a nightly music programme. His activity includes interactive newspaper contests and mail-in contests to encourage interaction with music scripts. His study has also previously demonstrated positive impact in phoneme acquisition in a school setting when used with elementary school children at emergent level reading. (Kothari et al, 2002). Kothari’s study (2002) demonstrated solid evidence that simply exposing struggling readers to Same-Language-Subtitled music at their instructional reading levels has a positive impact on reading growth. The continued study, however, examined illiterate and emergent level readers across a broadcast population, not a high school special education classroom, and not as applied to groups whose reading abilities can range from third through ninth grade reading levels. Further, his study and most related studies did not consider the rapidly developing field of media editing software which now allows teachers and students to have greater control over SLS presentations for classroom activities.

Official Google Blog: Same-Language Subtitling