A Study On The Degree Of Language Attrition Of Junior Non-English Majors

Language attrition, as an emerging field of applied linguistics, appeared in the year of the80s in the last century in Europe and America. It was firstly recognized as an emergent field of academic research at the conference on "The Attrition of Language Skills" at the University of Pennsylvania in1980. Language attrition has been understood as the loss of any language or any portion of language by individual or speech community due to the cease or reduction of use (Freed,1982). Since language attrition is associated with the process of the language acquisition, the study of language acquisition cannot ignore the language attrition. They are the two closely related aspects of language learning. After several decades of development, the research in language attrition abroad has produced fruitful results. However, the domestic research in this area has just begun since the21st century, and they are at the theory-introduction stage (Zhong,2003; Cai&Zhou,2004; Ni&Yan,2006) and at the early empirical study period. Thus the empirical study in this field is needed, especially the empirical study on the EFL learners’English attrition after they stop the formal classroom learning.Based on this, the present study intends to investigate the English language attrition among the junior students after they stop the formal English classroom learning. It explored the delaying effect of continuous learning on the degree of attrition and tried to justify the theory of inverse hypothesis, which denotes that there is an inverse relationship between the proficiency level prior to the beginning of attrition and the rate or amount of attrition (Vechter, Lapkin&Argue,1990). The study attempts to answer the following four questions:1) Is there any significant attrition on the learners’grammar, vocabulary, listening, and reading after stopping the formal classroom learning?2) Is there any delaying effect of continuous learning on language attrition?3) Do students who continue to receive the formal instruction show better retention of acquired language?4) Can the theory of the inverse hypothesis be confirmed through this study? Is the CET-4level the critical threshold level in China?The subjects investigated in this study are80junior students of non-English majors from two classes in Lanzhou Jiaotong University. The duration of this study was six months (one teaching semester). The pretest data was collected at the end of June2010, when the two classes finished their formal two years’ English learning on campus. Afterwards, the control class stopped the formal classroom learning, whereas the experimental class continued learning English in class,2hours per week for one term. Six months later, the posttest was conducted-at the end of Dec.2010. The data collected in pretest and posttest was processed and analyzed by the software of SPSS17.0. Based on results of the data analysis, the following conclusions can be drawn:1) the subjects in control class have shown obvious attrition after they stop the formal classroom learning for six months. The receptive skill experiences the most severe attrition, while comparatively, vocabulary attrition is the least significant one;2) the subjects in experimental class haven’t shown obvious attrition in vocabulary and reading, but the grammar attrition is quite significant. The listening, instead of decreasing, shows a little bit higher;3) the continuous formal classroom learning helps delaying the attrition amount or rate;4) the present study doesn’t justify the inverse hypothesis, and the CET-4level is not the critical threshold level in China.These results indicate that the establishment of the critical threshold level in China needs further empirical study. Besides, continuous learning is one of the feasible ways to slow down and prevent language attrition.