Educated Second Language and Literacy Learners

The role of memory in language learning has long been of interest to researchers in first and second language acquisition (SLA) (Baddeley, 1999; Ellis, 2001). At an intuitive level, it seems obvious that part of the explanation for individual differences among adults in success at learning a second language (L2) is attributable to differences in memory capacity. In SLA, researchers have focused on short-term rather than longterm memory differences because they think short-term memory is more responsible for differences in language development. The reason for this belief is that short-term memory is an on-line capacity for processing and analyzing new information (words, grammatical structures and so on); the basic idea is that the bigger the on-line capacity an individual has for new information, the more information will pass into off-line, long-term memory. It is an open question whether low-educated second language and literacy acquisition populations (LESLLA) have short-term memory systems that are similar to literate, educated populations, and if so how their working memory capacity can be measured. This paper will survey the literature on this topic, and will make some suggestions about how models of memory (as they have been applied to second language learning) may and may not be applied to LESLLA contexts. The review is organized as follows. First, different models are presented, along with the principal research results and main areas of disagreement among researchers. Section three deals with working memory and second language acquisition research. Finally, section four addresses how these models may or may not be appropriate to LESSLA contexts.