A Study On The Correlation Between The Spreading And Function Of Postgraduates' English Working Memory And English Reading Comprehension

From 1950 s to 1970 s, working memory had gradually aroused psychologists’ attention, and had become an important topic in the study of cognitive psychology and linguistics. Since Baddeley and Hitch proposed the model of working memory based on short-term memory in 1974, the research on working memory has been conducted for more than forty years. With the development of advanced science and technology and the access to effective test methods, great achievements have been made. English reading is an indispensable part of English learning. Along with the development of linguistics, cognitive psychology and psycholinguistics, the researchers pay more attention to the influencing factors on reading. Previous studies had shown that working memory span for adults was about 7 plus or minus 2 units, and limited memory capacity had an impact on the complex cognitive tasks. In the psychological linguistics, researchers explored the relationship between working memory span and reading comprehension. They found that the people of the same age had a similar working memory span in their mother language information processing; but in foreign language information processing, their working memory span showed the difference. Up to now, less empirical support on the relationship between the two factors has been found yet.Guided by the support of the resource sharing theory, the task-switching hypothesis and the time-based forgetting theory, this thesis aims to explore the relationship between the English working memory span and English reading comprehension. This study tries to answer the following questions:(1) Is there a difference between English majors and non-English Majors in English working memory span?(2) What’s the relationship between English working memory span and learners’ performance in reading comprehension?(3) Which factor exerts more powerful influence on reading comprehension, working storage or processing? The study adopts empirical method. The participants are selected randomly from the English and non-English Majors of postgraduates in Qu Fu Normal University. At the same time, this study uses the English working memory span test and English reading test to collect the data. In order to obtain the result from the collected data, this study employs research tools such as t-test, one-way ANOVA and Pearson correlation analysis.The findings of this paper are as follows: English working memory spans vary with the learner’s English reading proficiency. If learners have a higher English reading proficiency, their scores on working memory span are higher; and if learners have a lower level, their working memory span scores are relatively lower. In terms of both English and non-English Majors, their English working memory span and English reading comprehension ability are highly positive correlation. What’s more, the effect of processing function is more significant than storage function on English reading comprehension.This paper provides an effective way to improve English reading: to enhance the English working memory span. Firstly, learners should achieve automatic processing on English vocabulary, grammar, sentences to reduce the consumption of cognitive resources in working memory. Secondly, doing more reading, learners can increase their familiarity of the English language and save more time on information processing task. Finally, through browsing a variety of materials, learners can obtain more English information and increase their effective information processing and storage capacity.