A Study On The Influence Exerted By Schemata Activation On Working Memory In EFL Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension, as a basic language skill in college English, has always been considered as the most difficult part in English learning by teachers and learners. Although studies on the factors affecting the listening comprehension have been carried out by researchers, the memorial mechanism involved in the process has not been well explored. The exploration of memorial mechanism will not only further our understanding of listening comprehension's cognitive and psychological processing of linguistic information, but also be of great value for the evaluation of memory capacity in EFL listening comprehension. Therefore, this thesis will make an effort to study the cognitive factors affecting the listening comprehension. Furthermore, as there is no direct access to the "black box" of psychological processing in listening comprehension, all the previous researches on the role of working memory in listening comprehension have been confined to personal experiences or theoretical expositions, and a data-based empirical research is still beyond our sight.This thesis, therefore, guided by the theories of linguistic information processing and memorial resources allocation, applies an empirical methodology in an effort to explore the relation between working memory capacity and EFL listening comprehension. Meanwhile, it investigates the effect of schemata activation on working memory, thus attempting to put forwards feasible methods of improving EFL listening comprehension based on the results of the experiment.This thesis is made up of five parts, namely introduction, body (three chapters) and conclusion.Chapter One starts with a brief account of the research background, including the current situation of the teaching of college English listening and the problems involved, and goes on to put forward the purpose and significance of this study.Chapter Two reviews the definitions and theories of working memory, listening comprehension and schemata, details the development of working memory theory, highlights pervious researches on EFL listening comprehension and the classification of schemata.Chapter Three presents the key elements of this thesis:research purpose, research significance, theoretical basis and research design and procedures. It sets its purpose as an exploration of the relation between EFL listening comprehension and working memory, including three aspects:1), the effect of working memory on EFL listening comprehension; 2), the role of working memory in the comprehension of materials with different genres. Then, the relationship between schemata activation and working memory load and EFL listening comprehension is explored, including:1) the correlation between schemata activation and working memory.2) the effect of schemata activation on the comprehension of passages with different genres.Chapter Four sums up the data-based relation between working memory capacity, listening comprehension and schemata activation with the help of SPSS software, thus reaching conclusions as follows:firstly, working memory capacity has obvious negative effect on EFL listening comprehension; secondly, working memory capacity has obvious negative effect on exposition and argumentation, but has no effect on narration; thirdly, the activation of schemata can reduce the working memory load and the restriction of working memory capacity on listening comprehension; fourthly, while schemata activation has obvious positive effect on narrative passages and argumentative passages, it has no obvious effect on expositive passages.Chapter Five presents the research findings and analyzes both the implications and limitations of the study. And suggestions are brought forward for EFL listening teaching and learning.