In an earlier study, Service (1992) found that phonological short-term memory, reflected in the ability to repeat English-sounding pseudowords, was a good predictor of learning English as a foreign language over a period of three school years. This study attempts to find out to what extent foreign vocabulary learning is the critical learning process related to pseudoword repetition accuracy. Regression analyses on repetition data and learning measures revealed significant correlations between pseudoword repetition and foreign language learning, even after a measure of general academic achievement had been partialed out. In a fixed-order multiple regression analysis -with predictors entered in the order of general academic achievement, foreign language vocabulary, and pseudoword repetition -no additional variance in any foreign language measure studied could be accounted for by pseudoword repetition in the third step. When vocabulary in the second step was replaced by performance in foreign language essay writing or the correct reproduction of dictated discourse -both highly related to overall foreign language performance -repetition significantly increased the proportion of accounted variance, especially for two foreign language vocabulary tasks and a listening comprehension task. Phonological memory may, therefore, be specifically related to foreign vocabulary learning.Psycholinguistic language aptitude tests have been shown to be fairly good predictors of overall foreign language learning outcome (Skehan, 1989). With the accumulation of knowledge about the different kinds of memory stores and cognitive processes involved in learning, it has become possible to explore the strengths and weaknesses in foreign language learning in more detail. In a previous study, Service (1992) found that the ability to create and use accurate phonological representations to repeat Engh'shsounding pseudowords was a good predictor of learning English as a foreign language. The study followed 44 Finnish school-aged children from the time they started learning English (9-10 years of age) over a period of three school years. Good repetition performance, as measured as number of correctly repeated syllables at the beginning of learning, was correlated with language learning success, as indicated by school grade and common tests at the end of the third year. We speculated that immediate memory for new phonological forms, as revealed by the repetition task, might be necessary for vocabulary learning as nearly all the communicative tasks appearing in the pupils' language tests heavily depend on vocabulary knowledge. Another reason for suggesting this explanation was the growing number of studies indicating that short-term memory for verbal material or phonological forms is related to word learning.A number of neuropsychological patients with subnormal short-term memory capacity for verbal material have been reported to have difficulties in laboratory tasks that involve learning new vocabulary. Similarly, studies with young children learn...

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