THE INVESTIGATION OF FOREIGN WORD MEMORY USING NURSERY RHYMES

Abstract

In linguistics, prosody encompasses the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech, and this plays an important role in the language-learning process. This study seeks to understand this phenomenon further, providing novel language learning data with nursery rhymes as a vehicle to teach adults foreign words. Building on models of Dynamic Attending Theory and Phonological Short-Term Memory, it was theorized that the accuracy of foreign word learning is predicted by the prosodic cues present in the word’s learning context. This experiment included 3 tasks to explore this theory. Task 1 tested how accurately the participant processed the beat of a musical sequence. In Task 2, participants learned foreign words in a nursery rhyme context. Finally, in Task 3, participants were asked to identify which words they recognized from a large list of foreign words. Results showed a significant effect for prosodic cues’ influence on word memory. Specifically, temporal and rhythmic cues hierarchically facilitate phonological short-term memory, as represented in this paper’s proposed theoretical model. A potential link was also found between individual rhythmic ability and memory of foreign words. Overall, the present thesis offers a theoretical understanding of the use of nursery rhymes during adult foreign language learning