| Phonological awareness skills are a major component of foreign language aptitude (Hu & Schuele, 2005). This ability to break words into syllables and phonemes influences successful rehearsal of foreign words in the phonological loop (Baddeley et al., 1998) and ultimate encoding in long-term memory. Which form of rehearsal is optimal for foreign vocabulary learning, e.g. vocal or subvocal? Does manner of rehearsal affect performance on recall and recognition of foreign vocabulary?; Participants were 88 university students, all fluent in English, with no previous exposure to our test language, Turkish. Foreign language aptitude and phonological awareness were measured with the Modern Language Aptitude Test (Carroll & Sapon, 1959). Participants rehearsed twenty Turkish nouns in one of four conditions: vocal rehearsal with auditory feedback, vocal rehearsal with auditory feedback suppressed by white noise, subvocal rehearsal (i.e. inner speech, Guerrero 2005), and no rehearsal. Two dependent measures were used: word recall through picture identification and word recognition in orally presented sentences. To measure participant reactivity to vocabulary recognition, skin conductance response (SCR, a method not previously used in this research literature) was monitored during the recognition task.; As expected, high aptitude participants recalled and recognized significantly more target words than low aptitude participants in every rehearsal group (p < .03). Participants who rehearsed with no interference (i.e. vocally with feedback and subvocally) outperformed the other two groups on both recall and recognition. The findings indicate that the ability to rehearse produces a larger main effect than aptitude.; Unexpectedly, subvocal rehearsal was as successful as vocal rehearsal with full auditory feedback. The faster rate of inner speech, allowing for more rehearsal in the phonological loop, may compensate for lack of external feedback. High aptitude participants exhibited more electrodermal reactivity than low aptitude participants, as hypothesized. However, rather than finding a vocabulary recognition response, SCRs were higher for incorrect responses (p < .03). The higher SCRs may indicate a stress response from the high aptitude participants, having a higher awareness of their mistakes.; Results indicate that phonological awareness training along with focused rehearsal strategies may help override the effects of low aptitude in at-risk learners. |
