Phonological memory and the acquisition of grammar in child L2 learners

Abstract

Previous studies show that second language (L2) learners with large phonological me-mory spans outperform learners with smaller memory spans on tests of L2 grammar. Thecurrent study investigated the relationship between phonological memory and L2 gram-mar in more detail than has been done earlier. Specifically, we asked how phonologicalmemory relates to specific L2 grammar skills, after controlling for L2 vocabulary, andusing different phonological memory tasks. Participants were 36 Turkish child learnersof Dutch and 34 Dutch first-language (L1) children. All participants completed a Dutchnarrative task to assess their production of subject–verb agreement, auxiliaries, and verbplacement, and a Dutch vocabulary test. Phonological memory was measured throughserial recall of Dutch words, high-probability nonwords, and low-probability nonwords.The results show weak correlations between phonological memory and grammar inthe L1 group due to ceiling effects. For the L2 group, moderate to strong correlationsbetween phonological memory and grammar were found. Regression analyses showedthat word recall significantly predicted all three L2 grammar skills, above and beyondvocabulary. These findings indicate that the ability to temporarily store L2 material inphonological memory is important for L2 grammar learning, but that specifics of thememory tasks also play a role.