ENHANCING THE PHONOLOGICAL WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY THROUGH CLASSROOM-BASED INSTRUCTION TO DEVELOPE EFL/ESL LEARNING AND TEACHING (Published)
This article aims to increase teachers’ awareness of the phonological loop as part of the phonological working memory (PWM) and its function in storing and retrieving phonemic forms and then informing teachers of ways to implement this knowledge in actual teaching practices through proposing some classroom-based instruction. This article highlights the importance of the PWM in EFL/ESL learning. It identifies the roles and functions of PWM in acquiring, storing, and learning new vocabulary. These suggestions act as a guide for EFL/ESL teachers to increase their students’cognition and, in turn, their scholastic achievement. Various educational games and activities are introduced according to three keys findings from the literature: the importance of articulatory suppression and how can we incorporate it for better storage of phonemic input; the role of phonological awareness and how can we enhance it to expand the capacity of the PWM; and the influence of long-term memory and how can we activate it to enhance the PWM.
Keywords: Articulatory Suppression., EFL/ESL, Phonological Loop, Phonological Working Memory (PWM), Working Memory (WM), phonemic Awareness