While second language acquisition can be a complex and time-consuming process, developing efficient approaches that are less demanding on the part of the learner can greatly enhance the learning outcomes. The present study was an attempt to explore the potential application of priming as an approach to enhance the production of motion phrasal verbs. Ninety students were divided into intermediate and upper-intermediate groups based on their proficiency levels. The participants were required to narrate a silent movie as a baseline written production task. In the next stage, for the purpose of priming, they were required to read a storybook containing instances of motion events expressed in phrasal verbs. Immediately afterward, the participants were asked to narrate a second silent movie. The researchers also administered a working memory test to investigate its potential impact on the learning outcomes. The results indicated that only the upper-intermediate group benefited from the priming mechanism. Additionally, the results suggested that working memory did not show a significant predictive role in implicit learning within the specific context of motion phrasal verbs. These findings are in line with the processability hypothesis, which posits that developmental readiness plays a significant role in language learning.
