Working Memory and Lexical Knowledge as Factors of Listening Comprehension Among EFL Learners in Jordan

This study aims at investigating working memory and lexical knowledge as factors of listening comprehension among Jordanian EFL learners. It attempts both how working memory can affect listening comprehension and to what extent listening comprehension is enhanced by lexical knowledge. As an experimental research based on convenience sampling justified by proximity and availability, a number of 30 undergraduate EFL students at Jerash University, Jordan, enrolled in Course no. 102218 English Phonetics participated in a listening pre- and post-test on two levels: working-memory span and listening comprehension. The working memory span (WMS) is a binary test: listening span and listening comprehension as proposed by Daneman and Carpenter [1] as a dual-task test that assesses both listening-related functions storing and processing (cf. [2]). The findings of the study reveal that working memory is the most effective predictor of EFL listening comprehension and the students with larger WM capacities are more likely to be of enhanced listening skills. Regarding the lexical knowledge, it was revealed that being exposed to authentic audio materials exceeds the learners’ background lexical knowledge and fosters their level of listening comprehension. Also, authentic language input that levels up the acquired background knowledge is almost to end up with proficiency, knowing that all the language skills are interrelated and necessarily affect each other. Lastly, the study provides some implications and recommendations for either EFL learning and teaching.