The Role of Working Memory in Foreign Language Learning

The aim of my research was to investigate the relationship between phonological short-term memory capacity and foreign language learning. The participants of the study were thirty-one secondary school students who were in their first year of their studies. Their working memory capacity was measured with the forward digit span test (Racsmány, Lukács, Németh & Pléh, 2005) and the Hungarian version of the non-word repetition test (Racsmány et al., 2005). Besides, every participant had to complete the same questionnaire that aimed to reveal how difficult for them was to acquire foreign language words. Then, scores on the questionnaires were correlated with the working memory capacities of the students. I also correlated the working memory scores with the foreign languages’ grades of the students. While the result of my first correlational analysis indicated a significant relationship between phonological short-term memory capacity and the ease of acquisition of foreign language vocabulary, I found no significant correlations between the working memory capacities of the participants and their foreign languages’ grades.régi képzésangol nyelv és irodalom szakos tanár (távoktatás