Developing group-format reading span tests of English and Japanese for high-school students and investigating the relationship between working memory and English proficiency

Abstract

The present study develops group-format reading span tests (RSTs) of Japanese and English for Japanese high-school students and investigates whether it is feasible to administer the tests to groups within reasonably short periods. Reliability coefficients for the newly-developed RSTs were high; for Japanese, α=.864 and for English, α=.875. Moreover, test scores were found to be normally distributed. These findings indicate that the RSTs are effective for group administration. Further analyses of correlation differences between Japanese-English RST scores found correlation coefficients of .677 and .531 for higher English-proficiency and lower English-proficiency students, respectively, while a prior study has reported a correlation coefficient of .84 for English-major students. These findings suggest that working memory in L2 reading functions more similarly to L1 reading when L2 proficiency is higher.View full abstract