Effects of Listening on L2 Learners' Vocabulary Acquisition and the Moderating Role of Working Memory

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Cross-Linguistic Analyses of Language and Literacy Development

Abstract

The current study investigated young L2 learners’ incidental vocabulary development from listening to stories and the moderating role of phonological working memory. 190 fourth and fifth grade Korean-L1 EFL learners were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: listening to stories (VLL), listening to stories with teacher explanations of target words (VLLT), and control. Participants completed tests of meaning recall and meaning recognition as pretest, immediate posttest, two-weeks delayed posttest, and four-weeks delayed posttest. The participants demonstrated statistically significant vocabulary gains in the VLLT condition, and a statistically significant difference was found in favor of the VLLT condition over the VLL condition. Significant interaction effects for working memory were detected in the VLLT condition.

Authors

• Sarah Sok

• Hye Won Shin, Korea University