A Study Of The Attrition Of English Nouns Among Chinese College Students

The term "language attrition" has commonly been understood to refer to "the loss of any language or any portion of language by an individual or speech community". In the present study, this term is referred to as the loss of L2 or FL skills in the individuals after they stop their formal English language training program.The research of language attrition has been mainly done in European, American and Japanese contexts. It only received little attention in China. So far, in addition to several literature review papers, studies of language attrition among EFL learners in China have been sporadic.This thesis was designed to explore the attrition of English nouns among Chinese college students.40 English nouns were selected, Vocabulary test and questionnaire were used to collect data and non-English major college students were chosen as subjects. The research design was a 2 (nouns:concrete nouns and abstract nouns)×2 (skills:productive skill and receptive skill)×2(context:contextualized and non-contextualized) factorial. The attrition of English nouns under these levels was investigated in the present study then.The results show that (1) there is no difference in the attrition of concrete nouns and abstract nouns; there is no difference in the attrition of productive skill and receptive skill; there is no difference in the attrition of contextualized nouns and non-contextualized nouns. (2) there is an interactive effect between nouns and skills, the receptive skill of concrete nouns attrited most while the productive skill of concrete nouns attrited least. (3) there is no interactive effect between nouns and context, context and skill, nouns, skills and context.