The Effect Of Students’ Working Memory And Listening Style On Dictation

Dictation is adopted not only as a training activity, but also as a testing method inEnglish examinations, which can objectively reflect subjects’ overall languageproficiency, thus gaining attention among scholars at home and abroad. Most of presentliterature related to the influencing factors in dictation are theoretical and based onteaching process and experiences summarization. Therefore, present paper will try toexplore the impact of two factors (working memory and listening style) from theperspective of information processing on dictation based on Carroll’s and Richard’smodels.First of all, a path model containing three variables is established, which will beverified from the following three research questions:(1) Can subjects’ working memorypredict their dictation score?(2) Can subjects’ listening style predict their dictation score?(3) Can working memory predict subjects’ choice of listening style?Applying quantitative research method, present study chooses122freshmen from acomprehensive university, among which106freshmen have taken all of the tests andsurveys and provide valid data. The author inputs the data into SPSS17.0for Pearsoncorrelation analysis and regression analysis to verify the model.All of the three paths are statistically significant and the model is proved to be valid.Major findings are as follows:(1) Subjects’ working memory correlates with dictation toa significant level and can explain the variance of dictation score in a proportion of23.6%.(2) Subjects’ listening style also correlates with dictation to a significant level andit can explain the variance of dictation score in a proportion of16.7%.(3) There exists acorrelation between working memory and listening style and working memory canexplain15.0%of listening style according to present study. Based on the findings,pedagogical implications are given in the hope of providing some suggestions for teaching and learning in practice.The findings of this study reveal the relationship among working memory, listeningstyle and diction performance, which can enrich the empirical research related todictation. Pedagogical suggestions based on the results are expected to provide guidancefor dictation teaching and learning in the future.