THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN L2 GRAMMATICAL KNOWLEDGE AND PHONOLOGICAL MEMORY IN ADULT MALE EFL LEARNERS AT DIFFERENT LANGUAGE PROFICIENCY LEVELS

Evidence is accumulating that phonological memory (PM), a sub-component of working memory (WM), is closely related to different facets of second language (L2) learning. Moreover, little research has specifically delved into the relationship between the PM capacity and grammar among adult learners at different L2 proficiency levels. Therefore, it seems necessary to verify to what extent PM capacity might be related to grammatical knowledge in English as a foreign language (EFL) learners with different proficiency levels. To achieve this objective, the present study investigated the relationship between PM and L2 grammatical knowledge among native Persian-speaking male adults undergoing a 6-week intensive English course. The number of participants was 180 and their age ranged from 20 to 30. The participants were assigned to three different language proficiency levels (beginner, lower intermediate, advanced), 60 each, by using the Quick Placement Test (2001). PM capacity (as referenced by nonword repetition and nonword recognition tasks) and L2 grammatical knowledge were assessed in the first week of their course. After ensuring the normality of the data through SPSS 21, Pearson correlations and multiple regression analyses were conducted. The findings showed that L2 grammatical knowledge and PM tasks as assessed with English nonword repetition and recognition tests were moderately correlated among adult EFL learners in different levels of language proficiency. However, the correlation coefficients for the advanced group were lower than the other groups. Thus, the findings may imply that grammatical knowledge can be more closely related to PM capacity for beginners and lower intermediate learners than for advanced learners.