Research On The Working Memory Of The Teaching Mandarin As Second Language

Second language learning has become a widespread practice with the universe globalization,especially in China,with several problems encountered such as incomplete acquisition,learning plateaus,and fossilization.Mandarin is a particular language that is very different with other alphabets,and memory is a more critical foundation of learning.This study focuses on whether Mandarin learners' memory ability could be improved by effective ways.The memory span,phonological loop and mnemonic of vocabulary and pictophonetic characters were tested by four Chinese learners from different countries and various learning times.On the pair of words-nonwords,words-words,semantic associate(Mandarin-English,Mandarin-Mandarin),with phonological loop condition,the results show that phonological loop helps the memory of the second language(Mandarin).The correctness and error of testing contents position will be weakened along with the depth of loop.At the same condition,the test of working memory of the last word in each sentence is still dependent on the phonological loop,the results show that the subjects appear retardation in memory span.The learners' memory was tested by the recombination of pictophonetic characters,i.e.the keyword method in mnemonics.The results show that compared with the translation method,the keyword method had a more positive effect on memory of pictophonetic characters.The three language experiments can improve the subjects' Chinese memory ability,which may serve as a good reference for effective Chinese teaching and learning strategies.