Abstract
While subject?object asymmetry has been repeatedly reported in L2 processing of English long?distance wh?questions, the precise direction of the asymmetry has been controversial in the literature. This study was performed to provide further evidence on the direction of the asymmetry surrounding English long?distance wh?questions by investigating its relationship with L2 learners’ working memory. A total of 48 Korean college EFL learners participated in this study. Their general English proficiency, working memory, and processing of English wh?questions were measured by a cloze test, a reading span task and a picture?elicited comprehension task, respectively. The reading span task was scored in three different ways to investigate the effect of scoring method. The analyses of the data indicated the relative difficulty of object wh?questions over subject wh?questions. In the comprehension task, the participants performed better on subject wh?questions than object wh?questions. Furthermore, only object wh?questions showed a significant correlation with working memory capacity. This study also confirmed the influence of scoring method. Of the three types of partial credit scoring (i.e., storage only, processing only, storage and processing combined), only the processing component was significantly related with comprehension of object wh?questions.
Published Version
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call