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A Study Of Relationship Between Working Memory Span And English Listening Comprehension

Posted on:2013-09-23Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:F Z TangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2235330371987297Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
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Of the four main language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), listening is a critical and fundamental one which determines the quality of oral communication. However, research on English listening understanding has been at the superficial level in our country due to the speediness and unobservability of cognitive process in listening comprehension and thus, English listening remains one of the least understood processes and an obstacle in language learning. In recent years, although many researches have been done to explore the factors influencing listening comprehension such as ambiguity tolerance, language proficiency and anxiety, etc., there are few researches in terms of psycholinguistics. Yet in fact, listening comprehension is essentially a cognitive activity. It is necessary to account for the individual difference in listening comprehension proficiency from the perspective of psycholinguistics.This paper reports the result of an experiment. Participants are English major sophomores selected through a cluster sampling method from Xingjian College of Guangxi University. The Chinese working memory span task, the English working memory span task and the English listening comprehension test are employed to collect the required data to examine the relationship of Chinese and English working memory spans and English listening comprehension. The data is analyzed by both descriptive and inferential statistical methods to observe whether the data collected from the sample could be generalized to a certain group.The results of the present research are as follows:(1) Chinese working memory span is positively correlated with English working memory span. That is, the students with wider Chinese working memory span are mostly wider in their English working memory span.(2) Chinese working memory span is wider than English working memory span, which demonstrates that years of native language remembering task improve the efficiency of native language working memory.(3) Working memory span is an important cognitive factor that influences English listening comprehension.(4) There is stronger correlation between local question achievement and English working memory span than between global question achievement and English working memory span.On the basis of the above research results, some pedagogical implications are presented in an attempt to provide some suggestions to the teaching and learning of EFL listening comprehension.
Keywords/Search Tags:Chinese working memory span, English working memory span, English listening comprehension, correlation
PDF Full Text Request
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