A PRELIMINARY RESEARCH ABOUT BILINGUALISM AND WORKING MEMORY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE DEGREE AT UFERSA

Abstract

This exploratory study aims to investigate the relationship between the working memory (MT) capacity of students from the English Language course at UFERSA, enrolled in the English Literature I subject, offered in the seventh semester, and their reading ability in English. For this, we investigated the relationship between the students' working memory capacity and the ability to read in L2. Therefore, we consider the importance of TM and the fact that this construct is related to the act of reading (Consenza; Guerra, 2011; Baddeley et al., 2011), we present the concepts of bilingual subject (Longman, 2007, Bloomfield, 1935) and we agree that the bilingual subject does not need to have a native-like competence to be considered bilingual (Grosjean, 2003). Therefore, we conducted a quantitative research based on the application of reading tests and statistical data collection. Participants were submitted to the AWMA listening recall test (Automated Working Memory Assessment) and reading and writing activities, and the quantitative results were obtained using Spearman's correlation. Although the result was not statistically significant, we believe that with longer exposure to the tongue, our hypothesis can be corroborated. However, this work proposes a relevant discussion on the development of L2 reading in students of the Letters course at UFERSA and sheds light on future research that can be carried out in this context in our study environment.