A Study Of The Influence Of English Proficiency And Vocabulary Learning Strategy On Vocabulary Attrition In High School Students

Since 1980 s, language attrition has been viewing as an independent study field. Language attrition is an inverse process of language acquisition. It refers the phenomenon that people’s language or language skills are decreased or lost, because people do not use or rarely use this language. Therefore, this present study tries to explore the vocabulary attrition in high school students and the impact of vocabulary learning strategy on the vocabulary attrition.Three research questions were addressed in this study: 1) Is there any vocabulary attrition phenomenon after two-month cease of formal English study at school? 2) How does English proficiency affect the vocabulary attrition? 3) What is the relationship between vocabulary learning strategy and vocabulary attrition? In order to answer these questions, the quantitative research approach was employed. The subjects were 73 grade one students from a high school of Du Chang County. They were investigated by questionnaire on vocabulary learning strategy and vocabulary test that were conducted before and after two months attrition period. The whole research process includes two steps. For the first step, the questionnaire about vocabulary learning strategies and the vocabulary test were conducted. Besides, the scores of final English examination that were regarded as the English proficiency prior to vocabulary attrition were collected. For the second step, the same vocabulary test was conducted again after two months attrition period. Then, the scores of these two vocabulary tests were compared. The lost scores in the second vocabulary test were regarded as the vocabulary attrition degrees.The research findings of this study are the follows: 1) 89% subjects have suffered the vocabulary attrition, after two-month cease of formal English learning. 2) The vocabulary attrition is negatively related with the English proficiency prior to vocabulary attrition. The subjects with high English proficiency suffered less vocabulary attrition, but the subjects with low English proficiency suffered more vocabulary attrition. 3) The vocabulary learning strategy has significantly negative influence on the vocabulary attrition degree. The more vocabulary learning strategy the subjects used, the less the vocabulary attrition they suffered.The practical implications for vocabulary learning are: 1) For the students, they should apply more vocabulary learning strategy in the practical English vocabulary learning process, and keep their English vocabulary size on a relatively high and stable level. 2) For the teachers, they suggest that students should learn and apply English vocabulary constantly. If students don’t, they will suffer more vocabulary attrition.