Here is an article from OUP ELT journal authored by Karolina Baranowska.
Learning English through the media
In the past few decades, foreign language films and online media have received considerable attention in the ELT literature. Previous research reveals that exposure to various media positively correlates with foreign language acquisition in the case of both younger and older learners. For example, in the Early Language Learning in Europe project (Enever 2011), researchers explored, inter alia, the impact of out-of-school exposure to English in the case of primary school children from a range of European countries. As it turned out, the amount of exposure to foreign language films outside the classroom correlated positively with learners’ test scores in listening and reading comprehension.
Thus, the researchers suggest that undubbed television programmes should be more available to children since ‘the benefits of this additional language exposure outweigh the effort required’(Enever 2011: 7). There is also evidence that secondary school learners enhance their foreign language proficiency by means of watching videos in the target language. The aim of another large-scale study, First European Survey on Language Competences, was to collect data on foreign language learners’ proficiency in different European countries. Secondary school students from 16 educational systems were tested on their listening, reading, and writing skills in the two most widely taught foreign languages in their educational systems. Overall, the results revealed that learners benefited from exposure to the media as evidenced by test scores (Jones et al. 2012).