The Effect Of Mother Tongue Reading Ability And Working Memory Ability On English Reading Comprehension Of Junior High School Students

In recent years,the relationship between L1 reading,working memory and second language reading has been a hot topic in the field of second language acquisition.Second language learners undefined L1 reading ability and working memory ability also have different results on whether second language reading comprehension produces influences or not.In an in-depth review of the literature on working memory in the context of second language,researchers are also calling for further exploration of the role of working memory in second language development(Linck et al.,2014).In order to guide and evaluate second language reading,it is necessary to study the nuance of second language reading process(Jeongsoon Joh & Lia Plakans,2017).Therefore,this study intends to explore whether and how L1 reading ability and working memory ability affect English reading comprehension.Research questions include:(1)What is the relationship between L1 language reading ability and English reading comprehension?(2)What is the relationship between working memory and English reading comprehension?(3)Is there an interaction between L1 reading ability and working memory ability when they both affect English reading comprehension?This study adopts the method of empirical research,using the simple random sampling method to select 51 students of a middle school in jinan city as subjects.Data sources include tests of L1 reading ability,English working memory ability and English reading comprehension.The tests of L1 reading ability and English reading comprehension were carried out in the classrooms of the students,while the working memory test used e-prime2.0 programming and was completed by the students on a computer in the computer room.In this study,SPSS 23.0statistical analysis software was used for descriptive statistical analysis,Pearson correlation analysis,one-way ANOVA and two-factor ANOVA.The study finds:(1)There is a significant correlation between the L1 reading ability and the English reading comprehension,and that the English reading comprehension scores of the subjects with high L1 reading ability of are better than those with low L1 reading ability.(2)There is a significant correlation between working memory ability and English reading comprehension,and the English reading comprehension scores of subjects with high working memory ability are higher than those with low working memory ability.(3)Further analysis finds that L1 reading ability and working memory ability have no interaction with English reading comprehension,but the main effect analysis finds that compared with L1 reading ability,working memory ability have a more significant impact on English reading comprehension.In addition,subjects with higher working memory has higher scores in English readingcomprehension.This study has implications for improving English reading comprehension.Theoretically,the correlation between L1 reading and English reading comprehension supports the hypothesis of language interdependence.The correlation between working memory and English reading comprehension indicates that individual differences in working memory ability have an impact on important cognitive activities such as reasoning analysis and problem solving in reading comprehension.However,no interaction among the three indicates the complexity of reading comprehension,and other factors arising from individual cases may affect the reading process.In terms of teaching,second language teachers should pay attention to training students' Chinese reading strategies to cultivate English reading strategies.Teaches should take positive measures to activate students' existing storage background knowledge,match it with the incoming information,and make inference and refinement to adapt to the incoming text information and the existing storage knowledge.