A Study On The Effects Of Working Memory On High School Students' Acquisition Of Explicit And Implicit Grammatical Knowledge

In recent decades,working memory(WM)has garnered more and more attention in the field of second language acquisition(SLA),and the effects of WM on SLA have been extensively investigated both at home and abroad.Abundant studies have explored the relationship between WM and L2 grammar learning and processing,while the conclusion remains in dispute.Some studies suggest that WM can significantly predict grammar learning,while other studies have not observed such a significant effect of WM.However,few previous studies have separately considered the effects of WM processing and storage components on grammar acquisition.Furthermore,little attention has been paid to the effect of WM on the acquisition of explicit/implicit grammatical knowledge,and domestic researches concerned with this issue are greatly insufficient.The current study,based on previous researches,aims to empirically probe into the effects of WM on the acquisition of explicit/implicit grammatical knowledge among high school students.The research questions are as follows:(1)What is the current situation of high school students' WM and their acquisition of explicit/implicit grammatical knowledge?(2)How do WM and its processing and storage components affect high school students' acquisition of explicit grammatical knowledge? How are the immediate and delayed effects?(3)How do WM and its processing and storage components affect high school students' acquisition of implicit grammatical knowledge?How are the immediate and delayed effects? To probe into the above questions,73 firstgrade students from a high school in Zhejiang Province were as participants,and the subject clause was chosen as the target structure.Statistical analyses like correlation and regression analyses were employed to investigate the correlation between WM and the acquisition of explicit/implicit grammatical knowledge.The research included pretest,immediate posttest,and delayed posttest.The pretest consisted of the grammar knowledge pretest and the reading span test for measuring participants' WM capacity.After the pretest,participants received classroom instruction to learn the grammar knowledge of the target structure.The immediate posttest was conducted after the class instruction,and the delayed posttest was conducted one week later.Timed and untimed grammaticality judgment tests were employed to examine participants' acquisition of implicit and explicit grammatical knowledge.The results show that:(1)The development of WM processing and storage components among high school students is relatively synchronized,and their WM capacity is primarily limited by the storage component.In terms of the acquisition of the target structure,learners' acquisition of explicit grammatical knowledge significantly surpasses the corresponding implicit grammatical knowledge,while there is a significant correlation between them.(2)In terms of the acquisition of explicit grammatical knowledge,WM has a significant effect on the immediate acquisition,and WM processing component plays a dominant role in promoting and predicting learners' acquisition while its storage component does not.WM significantly impacts the delayed acquisition as well,and both WM processing and storage components have significant effects with the storage component a stronger predictor in this phase.(3)In terms of the acquisition of implicit grammatical knowledge,WM has no significant effect on the immediate and delayed acquisition,and neither its processing component nor the storage component could independently predict high school students' acquisition of implicit grammatical knowledge.The findings demonstrate different effects of WM on the acquisition of explicit and implicit grammatical knowledge among high school students,and WM processing and storage components play different roles in different stages of grammar acquisition as well.The findings help L2 practitioners better understand the role of WM in grammar acquisition,and more attention should be paid to the individual difference in learners' WM in classroom teaching.WM training methods like strategy training may be employed to improve learners' WM capacity,which is expected to make a meaningful contribution to their explicit grammatical knowledge acquisition.Besides,it is of importance for language educators to create an atmosphere beneficial for the transformation of explicit knowledge into implicit one,and more efficient pedagogical methods should be developed for learners to implicitly acquire linguistic knowledge,thus comprehensively improving learners' language proficiency.