Effects Of Dynamic Visual Enhancement And Working Memory On High School EFL Learners’ Recall Of English Vocabulary

Vocabulary is the foundation of language because of its function of carrying the main meaning of language.In 1990 Schmidt stated,in the Noticing Hypothesis,that attracting learners’ attention to linguistic forms is necessary in language acquisition.In order to make linguistic forms more attractive to learners,textual enhancement becomes an effective way to manipulate the input target forms to render them more salient to language learners.A growing number of studies have explored the effect of textual enhancement in the past decades,however,producing mixed results.Besides,the effect of dynamic visual enhancement,which is a form of textual enhancement,still remains unclear.Numerous studies have reported that working memory plays a critical role in second language acquisition generally.But few studies looked into the relationship between working memory and vocabulary learning with the aid of visual enhancement.In order to enrich the studies of dynamic visual enhancement and working memory,the current study expands on the role of working memory and determines whether there exists an interaction between foreign language vocabulary recall and dynamic visual enhancement,as well as the role of working memory in vocabulary recall.Based on the theoretical basis of Input Hypothesis,Noticing Hypothesis and Resource Sharing Theory,the current study tries to investigate,for English middle-level learners,whether dynamic visual enhancement can promote vocabulary recall and the correlation between working memory and vocabulary recall.Two specific research questions are proposed:(1)What is the effect of dynamic visual enhancement,in the form of flashing on the image,word,or image and word,on Chinese EFL learners’ recall of English vocabulary?(2)What is the effect of working memory capacity on Chinese EFL learners’ recall of English vocabulary when presented via dynamic visual enhancement?155 students from four parallel classes in Wuhan No.1 high school in Wuhan were selected as the research subjects.They were assigned into four groups according to their original classes.First,a word-image matching pre-test was implemented to examine participants’ prior knowledge level of target items.Second,during the experimental phase,four groups of participants watched learning materials with different types of dynamic visual enhancement,and finished the post-test immediately.Third,the operation-word span task was given to measure their working memory capacity.At last,the delayed post-test in the same form of previous two tests were implemented to subjects after two weeks.The study produced the following results.Firstly,the results showed that dynamic visual enhancement facilitates learners’ vocabulary recall in general,and dynamic visual enhancement on word or image alone is more effective for learners to recall English vocabulary compared with no enhancement.Besides,it was shown that emphasizing the meaning of a word,such as flashing on image,could potentially facilitate the vocabulary retention for a more extended period of time.What’s more,the number of visually enhanced cues is importantly associated with second language vocabulary recall.When receiving multiple sources of visual input simultaneously,learners would gain a cognitive overload which would inhibit their acquisition.Therefore,it should be prudent to use enhancement instruments.Secondly,working memory capacity is an important cognitive factor that positively affects the recall of vocabulary through dynamic visual enhancement.In addition,high working memory capacity is prone to result in a better retention of vocabulary than low working memory capacity.Then,some pedagogical implications are shown from the perspective of dynamic visual enhancement to bring certain enlightenment to language learners and teachers and to improve vocabulary recall and acquisition.At the same time,some pedagogical implications will help EFL learners to compensate their individual limitations of working memory capacity,then to improve their vocabulary learning ability.At last,some limitations of the current study from different aspects are listed and some suggestions for future studies are offered.