An Empirical Study Of The Lexical Richness Attrition Of Non-english Majors In China

This research explores whether the English lexical richness of non-English majors will be attrited or not with 48 sophomores and 48 juniors from Wuhan University of Science and Technology serving as the subjects.The information of the background,English use and attitude/motivation towards English of the subjects are elicited from the questionnaires.After watching an 8-minute silent film which is a section of Tom and Jerry,the subjects are asked to retell the story they?ve just watched by writing them on paper and then what they write are transcribed into computer.By the application of RANGE 32 and SPSS 17,the English lexical richness is investigated from three perspectives,which are lexical diversity,lexical sophistication and the rate of lexical errors.The results are showed as follows.(1)The lexical richness attrition is in a non-linear way: compared with sophomores,there is significant difference in lexical diversity and the rate of lexical errors while no salient difference is observed in lexical sophistication,which indicates that lexical diversity and the rate of lexical errors is attrited while lexical sophistication is not attrited.(2)The affecting factor of the attrition of lexical diversity is initial proficiency while the attrition of the rate of lexical errors is influenced by initial proficiency,attitude/motivation,gender and language use.(3)From the perspectives of Dynamic Systems Theory,on the one hand,the openness,high dependency on external and internal environments and resources of language system mean that the lack of necessary investments of resources will result in language attrition as the language system cannot maintain its optimal state,which provide an explanation for no attrition in lexical diversity or in the rate of lexical errors;on the other hand,the non-linearity and the complex interactions among variables lead to the unpredictability of attrition to some extent;besides,when the language system moves from one attractor state from another attractor state,there will be huge fluctuations from the inside,which explains why the rate of lexical errors is attrited.(4)Some students adopt “complementary strategies” to make up for their forgetting of some certain words;positive complementary strategy can lead to the decline of lexical sophistication while complementary strategy will result in the increase of the rate of lexical errors.