Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of English processing and storage in working memory between English native speakers and Japanese EFL learners. Five kinds of tests, that is, two types of digit span tests of forward recall(DST1) and backward recall (DST2), a computation span test(CST), a reading span test(RST) and a listening span test (LST) were administered to 22 English native speakers and 29 Japanese university students. The results showed two remarkable points of comparison between the two groups, as follows: (1) The span scores of RST and LST among the English native speakers were much higher than those of the Japanese EFL learners at the significant level of p .001, though those of DST1, DST2 and CST were not. (2) The correlation between the reading time of RST and its recall was significantly positive only in the Japanese. Overall, the present study indicated differences between the English native speakers and the Japanese EFL learners in utilizing the working memory at higher levels of English sentence processing.
