Identifying and supporting students with poorer working memory

In the second language acquisition research literature, some scholars believe that a key factor in language learning aptitude is working memory. Working memory, you may recall, is our so-called mental workspace where we hold things in our conscious attention. Working memory span, or capacity, varies somewhat between individuals and may, or may not, be subject to alteration through specific exercises. In typical memory models (e.g. the famous Baddeley model), by rehearsing things in working memory, e.g. practising silently or saying things out loud, we can help information pass into long-term memory, where we need it to be. Think, for example, how you say out loud a telephone number to help it stick in your memory. As a reminder, here is the general model of memory often shared with teachers these days.

For language teachers, phonological working memory is of particular interest, since we depend so much on students listening to language. Phonological working memory, in the Baddeley model, is that part of short-term memory where we hold and process sounds and language. 

With this in mind, it's possible that students who struggle in your lessons may have a less efficient working memory, so find it hard to keep in mind and rehearse language when they hear it. This means items will be quickly forgotten and never make it into long-term memory. This must be a very frustrating experience.

(In passing, it's worth noting that language acquisition is usually said to be primarily an implicit process, so some writers would argue that working memory is not a key factor in acquisition. After all, we all learn out first language(s), whatever our working memory capacity might be. The arguments here are beyond the scope of this blog post. For a good summary of this whole area, here is a useful page.)

In our book on memory (Smith and Conti, 2021), we devoted a section to helping to identify and support students with poorer working memory. An extract is below.

Identifying students with poorer working memory

It helps to be able to identify which students are likely to struggle more than most. Below are some tell-tale signs to look out for.

• Incomplete recall. Students skip steps when carrying out a task, rather than working through them as asked.

• Difficulty getting started. This is often because the student’s working memory has been overloaded with all the instructions they received. 

• Slow to copy things down. This is because the student may find it hard to remember more than one or two words at a time, so they frequently need to check and recheck the original sentence. 

• Not answering questions. Students are often reserved when participating in class. They may have forgotten part or all of the question, be unsure whether some of the information they are volunteering has already been discussed or have forgotten parts of the topic that everyone is discussing (such as vital parts of a book that has just been read out loud to the class).

• Struggling to take notes. Again, this is because students can only remember a short amount of information in the time it takes to write it down.

• Difficulty repeating longer utterances. With poorer phonological short-term memory, some students find it hard to hold on to full sentences when repeating or formulating utterances.

General guidance points for lower-performing students

Here are some other suggestions when it comes to teaching lower-attaining students:

• Do not focus too much on grammatical explanations. Spend little time on structures which will not be acquired.

• Keep the focus on comprehensible input and communicating easy messages.

• In terms of vocabulary, cut down the number of words and chunks to be heard, read and used, but practise them frequently. 

• Use spaced learning and regular retrieval practice through quizzing to help memories bed in.

• Consider using sentence builders with English translations to ensure all language is understood. Weaker students are more likely to switch off when they don’t immediately understand. Many teachers report that sentence builders have improved the confidence of their lower-performing students.

• Support listening work with the use of transcripts. This helps mitigate any difficulties with phonological processing.

• Make greater use of English and translation. Many students have poor literacy skills in English, so you can play a role in building these, along with their TL skills. 

• Make everything totally clear and as simple as possible, providing short-term wins for students.

• Make sure the assessment system gives a fair chance of success. Assessment questions should look the same as activities done in the preceding lessons. Research shows that this helps students remember.

• Keep a good balance of four skills, but enhance the role of reading and writing since these involve a lighter cognitive load. Listening and speaking require students to process lots of information on the spot which places a burden on phonological working memory. It’s sometimes forgotten that less confident students are often happier writing than speaking.

• Where concentration spans are shorter and memories poorer you need to vary tasks even more than usual. So, divide lesson plans into shorter sections. 

• Be more careful than usual to set written tasks which will produce fewer errors, then be more selective in correcting error. Avoid setting free writing tasks unless they are highly scaffolded.

• Many successful teachers find that more hands-on and visual activities pay dividends, e.g. card-sorting, dominoes and activities such as dice games. But we have to be careful: aspirations need to remain high and you can’t fill time with tasks which don’t promote the formation of long-term memory. 

• Focus on cultural aspects of the subject to encourage greater motivation. Lower-attaining students are less likely to buy into learning and practising vocabulary and grammar in the abstract.

• All students benefit from praise, but those who struggle may appreciate selective praise and rewards even more.