Mohammad Nabi Karimi - Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics, Kharazmi University,
Reza Naghdivand - MA Student of TEFL, Kharazmi University

Working memory (WM) capacity is a construct of crucial importance in cognitive approaches to SLA. Multiple instruments have been used for measuring working memory capacity (WMC), including reading span tests, operation span tasks and listening span tasks. These tests have been used extensively because they enjoy high reliability and validity and are easy to implement. They are used to measure WMC both in L1 and L2. Majority of the languages across the world have their own specific WMC tests; however, such a test is lacking in Persian and hence the translations of the original English tests are used for assessing L1 WMC which can totally distort the nature of the tasks. In this paper, a parallel reliable test for measuring reading span is designed. The newly developed test enjoys a test-retest reliability of .63 and is proven to correlate well with other measures of WM capacity such as automatic operation span task and general intelligence tests such as Raven progressive matrices, further, the results of the multiple regression suggests that the multiple regression model fits well (with the coefficient of .70) and that the combination of the predictor variables (performance on automatic operation span task and Raven progressive matrices) explain 49 percent of variance in the dependent variable (performance on parallel Persian reading task). The arguments regarding the magnitude of the observed reliability indexes are also discussed, and it is shown that such degrees of reliability could be considered high and finally the practical and theoretical implications of having such a test in Persian are mentioned

working memory, working memory capacity, working memory span task