The Direction For Future Research In The Area Of Foreigh Language Aptitude

After Carroll’s studies of aptitude or a post-Carroll research, the interests in the field furthers into three directions,

1. Aptitude measurement,
2. Research based on Carroll’s different components of aptitude,
3. Aptitude-treatment interactions.

Carroll once mentioned in his 1990’s study that it was still rare for a research concerning memory component since attention was paid to cognitive resolution primarily. Hence, it is suggested that WM shall be an area for further study in greater details. More interestingly, it is not a matter of only studying to understand and explaining the relationship between foreign language aptitude and WM because their relationship hypothesis is much contested. Though, the studies for taking the most benefits from WM for developing foreign language skills should also be taken into account. As can be seen from previous arguments that the conditions or classroom instructions can enhance the foreign language learning to some extent such as explicit instruction is suitable for complex grammatical structures, the importance and functions of WM should be considered along with each language skill in more details as follows.

1. WM and listening skill, according to Clark & Clark (1977), the process of listening consists of six stages. First a person receives the raw speech and then retains the phonological representations inside the brain. Here, WM works as a device to segment these representations before organizing or parsing the segmentation into constitutions and classifies their content and function. After the meaning is extracted, the response will be formulated even the person is only listening. The memory of phonological forms is erased, but the meaning stays.
2. WM and reading skill, reading comprehension process also consists of working stages of WM and foreign language acquisition. Koda (2005) was cited that, the lexical items are extracted from print, then they are merged in chunk such as phrases or sentences. WM facilitates the process beyond lexical access and operation. In other words, the grammatical process interacts with the long-term knowledge stored in WM of the subject matter.
3. WM and speaking skill, there are three stages of speech production including Conceptualization where the non-language communicative intention is generated and maintained in WM, Formulation is when lemmas or lexical items are selected and this process stimulates the grammatical encoding process, Articulation is a result from the formulation process. However, Levelt’s three stages of speech production was also criticized by Payne and Whitney (2002) saying that Levelt needed to consider an individual’s different WM capacity since WM may also affect relatively at different ages of learning.
4. WM and writing skill, Kellog’s (1996, 1999) proposed the WM writing model including three systems of written production, formulation, execution, and monitoring. There are some studies confirm that WM correlates significantly with writing process, especially with text generation. Nevertheless, the study about the role of WM in L2 writing is still inadequate and it is worth for further exploration.
5. WM and bilingual interpretation, WM can be used for its most benefit when interpreting. A person listens and comprehends the speech in one language, then the coded speech is stored in WM and the person can produce the interpretation of that speech later. Again, WM plays an essential role in interpretation processes, particularly in the complex processes of simultaneous translation. Hence, Wen and Skehan (2011) suggested that the study of WM in this area is still rare.

In sum, it has been contested that WM and foreign language aptitude relate to the foreign language acquisition. There are some scholars in the field trying to promote the classroom instructions which are believed to help facilitate the foreign language learning. The further research in this field that we need to pay attention can possibly be developed from the prediction and explanation of the work of WM to the pedagogical practices in different learning contexts in order to meet the different requirements of each different learner. As a result, different foreign language skills can be simultaneously improved from the benefits of WM.