An Empirical Study On The Roles Of Both Working Memory And Vocabulary Size In EFL Reading Comprehension

Working memory(WM)is a capacity-limited system that provides temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary for such complex cognitive activities as language comprehension,learning and reasoning.Reading comprehension is a sort of complicated cognitive activity,therefore it greatly depends on this capacity-limited WM.Since WM was introduced into Second Language Acquisition(SLA)by McLaughlin and Krashen in 1980s,researchers have done a large number of studies from the perspective of cognition to investigate how it influences reading comprehension.Vocabulary knowledge,as a major part of descriptive knowledge that stores in long-term memory(LTM)is an essential building block of reading comprehension.It cannot be denied that as components of memory system,both WM and LTM provide significant roles in reading comprehension.However,most previous studies were carried out to explore the effect of one factor and the other tended to be ignored.This cut the complete cognitive process and could not supply comprehensive analysis of the influences of the two factors.The present empirical study aims at investigating the influence of both WM and vocabulary size on English as Foreign Language(EFL)reading comprehension.The author attempts to find answers to the following three questions:(1)What is the relationship between vocabulary size and EFL reading comprehension?(2)What is the correlation between working memory capacity and EFL reading comprehension?(3)Is there any correlation between storage and processing component of working memory?Forty-three junior students from English major in Yunnan University were randomly selected as the subjects.The adopted Reading Span Task(RST)was carried out on personal computer by using E-Prime 2.0 psychology software to measure subjects' WM capacity.Besides,subjects' vocabulary size was evaluated by Nation's Vocabulary Size Test(1990).At last,a reading test from IELTS(International English Language Testing System)was chosen to measure the EFL reading comprehension of the subjects.When the experiment was completed,the gathered data was analyzed with the help of the software Statistical Package for Social Science(SPSS,the 22.0 version).Three major conclusions have been drawn:(1)There is a high correlation between vocabulary size and EFL reading comprehension.(2)Working memory capacity significantly correlates with EFL reading comprehension,not least with inferences making.(3)No correlation is found between storage and processing component of working memory.The result of this study will have great significance in the improvement of English learners' reading ability as well as effectiveness of teachers'teaching methods.