Phonological short-term memory as a predictor for the uptake of collocations
Phonological short-term memory as a predictor for the uptake of collocations

Summary/Abstract: It has been widely attested that L2 learners’ acquisition of collocations, a subset of formulaic sequences (FS), shows large individual variation. At the same time, there is a growing consensus among scholars that working memory is a central component of foreign language aptitude that largely determines differences in second language success. Research has demonstrated that especially phonological short-term memory (PSTM) – a component of working memory – plays an important role in foreign language acquisition. The aim of the present study is to investigate if there is a relationship between learners’ PSTM and their uptake of collocations in a classroom context. Therefore, the PSTM of 20 Dutchspeaking university students majoring in German was measured by means of a serial nonword recognition task. To measure students’ uptake of collocations, a pre-test posttest design was adopted. Between pre-test and post-test, the students took part in incidental as well as intentional learning in a classroom context. To be able to control for vocabulary size in the analysis of the data, two standardized vocabulary size tests were administered: one for receptive and one for productive vocabulary knowledge. Results of the multiple regression analysis show that in this study, PSTM predicts 29,7% of the variance in the uptake of collocations, whereas students’ receptive and productive vocabulary size did not predict this uptake.

• Details
• Contents