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SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION LAB |
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PROJECTS |
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CENTRAL RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT FUND - U. OF PITTSBURGH | |||
| PI: Dr. Alan Juffs | ||||
| WORKING MEMORY AND READING IN SPANISH-SPEAKING LEARNERS OF ENGLISH | ||||
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The major goal of the research is to refine and extend studies reported in Juffs (1998a,b; 2004 and 2005). In this research, it was determined that adult Spanish-speaking learners of English as a second language were able to process complex syntax in a way that resembled native speakers of English. However, predictions about individual differences based on other cognitive measures, specifically working memory, were not supported: measures of working memory - neither word span nor reading span in either the first or second language - correlated with the time course of sentence processing or more general measures of proficiency. In addition to re-examining this cognitive variable, this study looks at comprehension of longer passages as well as individual sentences. The importance of longer-term investigation is that little is known in second language acquisition about Spanish speakers who are not college-educated versus those who are. The United States faces several issues with regard to this total population, which according to the 2000 census makes up 12.5% of the population. |
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