LISTENING COMPREHENSION AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY IN BEGINNING L2 LEARNERS

Abstract: The objective of present study was to investigate whether individual differences in working memory capacity of L2 learners predict listening comprehension performance in a proficiency exam. Participants included two groups of adult students (24 students in total) of English as an L2. In the first part of the experiment, the 24 adult students performed a Listening Mock test. In the second part of the experiment the 24 adult students performed a working memory span test. The hypothesis of the study was that individual differences in working memory capacity of L2 learners would predict listening comprehension performance in a proficiency test. The hypothesis was confirmed. Individual differences in working memory capacity predicted listening comprehension performance, showing that the larger the working memory storage capacity is, the higher the scores in listening comprehension tasks will be