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The Effects of Syntactic Enhancement on L2 Readers With Low Working Memory

  • Modern English Education
  • Abbr : MEESO
  • 2017, 18(4), pp.47-66
  • DOI : 10.18095/meeso.2017.18.4.03
  • Publisher : The Modern English Education Society
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Language Teaching
  • Published : November 30, 2017

박영민 1

1부산대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This study investigated whether the effects of syntactic enhancement on rapid and accurate reading varies depending on second language (L2) students’ working memory capacity. Visual-syntactic text formatting (VSTF) technology was used to create syntactic enhancement, reformatting text in a way to make English sentence structures salient. L2 college students from the U.S. and South Korea participated in this study. The participants were identical in terms of their baseline English proficiency, evidenced by the results of vocabulary and word recognition tests. They were assigned either to low (n = 28) or high working memory groups (n = 30) based on their scores on a working memory test. Both groups read half of the passages in the VSTF condition and the others in the block condition. Syntactic enhancement did not commonly influence the reading speed, but both groups’ performance on information questions. In addition, syntactic enhancement assisted the low working memory group in making inferences. Although syntactic cues are only part of a multifaceted L2 reading process, these findings provide support for syntactic enhancement as a helpful tool to promote L2 reading comprehension without hindering reading speed, especially for those with low working memory capacity.

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