From Watching to Speaking: Boosting EFL Learners’ Lexical Sophistication through Post-Viewing Plot Reading

Although multimodal instruction has gained steady attention in recent years, relatively little work has looked closely at what happens when learners engage in a structured reading task immediately after watching a film. In particular, the role of post-viewing plot reading in shaping learners’ lexical sophistication in spoken output has been largely overlooked. The present study explores how reading Wikipedia plot summaries after viewing film segments influences the use of advanced vocabulary in narrative retellings. The project was carried out at a university in Iran with 56 upper-intermediate English majors, all Persian-speaking, who were assigned to experimental and control groups. Both groups watched identical film excerpts and completed the same speaking tasks; the only distinction was that the experimental group also read the relevant plot summary before speaking. To examine the spoken data, I relied on the Lexical Frequency Profile and VocabProfile tools. The analyses showed that learners who completed the post-viewing reading stage produced more low-frequency and academic lexical items, displayed a wider range of vocabulary overall, and showed somewhat more complex syntax in their retellings. Insights from semi-structured interviews echoed these patterns, with students noting that the reading step sharpened their attention to vocabulary and made it easier to speak with fewer pauses. Taken together, the findings suggest that pairing visual input with a brief textual scaffold can nudge learners toward more sophisticated language use. This simple intervention, therefore, holds promise for teachers seeking practical ways to enrich lexical sophistication in EFL speaking classes.