An Empirical Research On English Attrition Of Non-English Major Students

According to Lambert and Freed, Language attrition refers to the loss of anylanguage or any portion of language by individual or speech community due to thecease or reduction of use. It is inevitable during the language learning process.Language attrition was firstly put forward by Lambert on the conference of languageskills’ attrition held in University of Pennsylvania. Experiencing more than30years’development, it has been a relatively independent area. Foreign scholars make a lot ofresearches on language attrition. Then, a relative theoretical system has been formed.By contrast, the researches at home are very rare. Currently, most of the researchachievements are about the introduction and literature review of language attrition.Meanwhile, there are few researches on the realistic situation of language attrition.There are many kinds of language attrition, but second language attrition is discussed inthis paper. The current research focuses on English attrition of non-English major seniorstudents18months after finishing English in-class learning. Besides, the relationshipsbetween initial proficiency and language attrition, gender difference and languageattrition are verified.The paper makes an investigation among the non-English major senior students.According to CET-4examination paper, the current research tests all subjects’ Englishproficiency at different times. Then it analyzes the data collected from tests by SPSS16.0. The current research applies quantitative research method to analyze the situationof language attrition after the disuse for18months, points out what skills suffer fromlanguage attrition, discusses the influences of initial English proficiency and genderdifference on language attrition, and verifies the Inverse Hypothesis. The resultsindicate that there actually exists language attrition among all the subjects after thedisuse for18months. Through analyzing the relationship between initial languageproficiency and attrition among three groups (all the subjects are divided into3groups),we also find that the lower the English proficiency level is, the more the amount oflanguage attrition is. The finding verifies the Inverse Hypothesis. In addition, the paperalso analyzes the factor of gender difference and finds that gender difference indeed hasan effect on language attrition but not that obvious. We find that only the attrition oflistening skill is influenced by gender difference while others are not. Based on theresearch results, the paper provides some suggestions. Firstly, foreign language teachersshould pay enough attention to language attrition during teaching process. They shouldtry their best to reduce the amount of language attrition through various ways. Besides,foreign language teachers should encourage students to reach a higher Englishproficiency level before finishing in-class English learning, which will help studentsreduce the amount of language attrition. According to different characteristics of female and male students, teachers should adopt different teaching methods to help themreduce attrition respectively. Secondly, students should use English as much as possible,which will help them maintain English proficiency. Finally, speaking of the curriculumplanning, colleges should set up continuous English courses during all4years.