Closed‐Captioned Television: A New Tool for Reading Instruction:

Abstract

Since 1980, many popular television programs on ABC, NBC and PBS have been closed‐captioned. These captions are subtitles which present a steady stream of written language with video and audio reinforcement. While the captions were originally developed for the hearing impaired, there is considerable potential for their use with hearing populations. This article describes two projects which involved teachers using closed‐captioned television materials to develop skills in the areas of comprehension, vocabulary, and oral reading fluency with hearing remedial readers, Positive evaluations by teachers and students suggest that this area merits further investigation.