Abstract
A re-awakening of interest in foreign language aptitude in recent years has also seen some reanalyses of the construct. Prominent in these reanalyses is revised conception of memory and aptitude, and particularly, the role of working memory. A number of studies have explored the relevance of non-word repetition tests as measures of this type of memory. Building on this work, the present article reports on the development of language-specific non-word repetition tests. It is proposed that non-word repetition tests based on the phonological structure of the language to be learned will be particularly effective at predicting second language learning. Non-wordness, in this view, is defined with reference to the target language. The article reports on the development of such tests, focussing on the case of Cantonese, a tonal language, where approaches to the characterisation of non-words are particularly challenging. The article reports on methods of overcoming these difficulties. It also argues that such an analysis of working memory brings this construct close to Carroll’s characterisation of one of the components of foreign language aptitude – phonemic coding ability.
Highlights
Many years ago Cronbach (1975), writing within mainstream psychology, lamented the separation of the discipline into two camps: researchers who focused on learner differences, and researchers who were more concerned with common processes and universals
As a preface to this section, it is useful to recall the analysis of comprehension provided by Clark and Clark (1977). They suggest that listeners take in phonological representations of speech, analyse this material, extract meaning, and purge working memory of the “slice” of speech that has been processed
We will return to this fundamental insight several times: are there relevant cognitive abilities for the processes of second language acquisition? And, relatedly, are there individual differences which are relevant to this ability?
Summary
Many years ago Cronbach (1975), writing within mainstream psychology, lamented the separation of the discipline into two camps: researchers who focused on learner differences, and researchers who were more concerned with common processes and universals. As a preface to this section, it is useful to recall the analysis of comprehension provided by Clark and Clark (1977) They suggest that (first language) listeners take in phonological representations of speech, analyse this material, extract meaning, and purge working memory of the “slice” of speech that has been processed. Input is transformed into meaning, and the decks are cleared, so to speak, because the slice of input is about to arrive This raises a fundamental issue for language processing: how do listeners, let alone acquirers, cope with the real-time problem, and, in the case of acquirers, who may want to extract useful things from the input to cause change in underlying interlanguage systems, i.e. to focus on form (Doughty, 2001), how can they make such extractions under the time pressure they are under?. We will return to this fundamental insight several times: are there relevant cognitive abilities for the processes of second language acquisition? And, relatedly, are there individual differences which are relevant to this ability?
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