The impact of colors on human memory in learning English collocations: evidence from south Asian tertiary ESL students

Abstract

This paper aims to highlight the significance of color that captivates human attention in learning English collocations in an educational setting. In order to expedite the impact of color on memory, an empirical research was conducted, in which 30 South Asian ESL students of a local university in China were selected as participants, equally divided into the experimental and the control groups. All the participants were taught literal and context-based meanings of 30 English collocations for three consecutive days. A pre-test and a post-test were administered to assess the impact of color on the students’ working memory in learning English collocations. Prior to assessing the impact of color on memory, the participants in the experimental group were exposed to the underlined collocations as written on colorful papers (yellow), while same collocations were imprinted on simple white color papers for the controlled group. A t-test was administered for the statistical analysis of the data. Comparatively, in the post-test, the participants in the experimental group remarkably outperformed while retrieving English collocations and their meanings by the virtue of yellow color. The finding of the current paper lends support to the notion that color, as an environmental stimulus, may greatly affect human working memory in learning English collocations. The study is expected to provide implications to text and curriculum designers by supplementing ESL learners with colorful texts and images in order to harness their language efficiencies and performances.