The Positive Influence of English-Language Activities on English Digit-Span Performance Among Japanese Elementary School Children: A Three-Year Cross-Sequential Study

Abstract

We conducted an experimental study of an English-experience program in which children regularly engaged in English-language activities in a Japanese elementary school over the course of 3 years. Three groups of children (first, third, and fifth graders upon joining the project) participated. The children engaged in Japanese and English aural digit-span tests in the first, second, and third years of the program. Results showed that the children's digit-span performance in English improved dramatically during their 3-year participation and that the increase was larger than that in Japanese. This finding was most pronounced in children in the middle group, and was discussed in terms of total exposure time to spoken English, the amount of after-school English activities, and the sensitive period hypothesis of a second language acquisition. We concluded that the English-activities program employed in this study was effective in facilitating the acquisition of phonological forms of English among Japanese students in elementary school.Key words: Short-term memory, working memory, digit span, language-familiarity effectIt has been widely accepted that large cross-language differences exist in verbal short-term memory performance, which is typically measured by the immediate serial recall of words or digits. One of the most prominent features of the cross-linguistic differences has been found in the language-familiarity effect, a phenomenon in which better immediate memory is displayed in response to linguistic materials that are familiar to participants than to those that are unfamiliar (e.g