Learning medical English on YouTube. The use of TV series and subtitles

YouTube provides free access to a wide range of educational videos on many areas of knowledge, including foreign language learning, arouses the interest and motivation of students and is considered a powerful and convenient instructional tool (Nitorescu, 2011; Terantino, 2011; Cancelas and Herrera, 2014; Chien et al., 2020). Due to this, an increasing number of YouTube channels publish educational videos on foreign language learning, which can be used in formal, non-formal and informal education. However, research is scarce on these videos in audiovisual translation and language teaching fields. Consequently, this paper provides an overview of the educational videos that can be found on YouTube for learning specialised English, more specifically, medical English, and presents an analysis of the types of subtitling used in these videos to promote vocabulary acquisition. The results derive from a two-phase investigation process. First, the analysis of a corpus composed of 31 videos from 10 YouTube channels to describe the videos’ didactic resources, content and structure, activities to improve linguistic and communicative competences and subtitles features. Second, the study of a subcorpus of 16 videos that use TV series as a didactic resource. This analysis aims to describe the TV series, how they are used, and the way subtitles are utilised in the lessons. Furthermore, it identifies the reception of the videos by the general and specialised public according to their impact, which is measured by considering views and likes per month and users’ comments. The results show that these videos are beneficial for improving vocabulary and other competences, such as reading, listening and speaking, and use three types of subtitling: automatic, traditional or creative. Besides, the videos with the highest impact are those using famous TV series, like Friends, The Big Bang Theory, The Good Doctor or Grey’s Anatomy.