An Empirical Study On The Influence Of English Learning Style Preference On The English Attrition

Currently in China, most of the scholars only focus on the study of the language acquiring process, ignoring analyzing the inverse process of the language acquisition. Attrition, consequently, viewed as such significant process, is becoming an independent field in the linguistics providing a totally new perspective for the comprehensive study of the language acquisition. While, in china, the empirical research on attrition has just started.The important point of the research on the language attrition is about the influencing factors so as to prevent the occurrence of the attrition and acquire language effectively. Learning style, an important concept in the second-language acquisition, also affects the second language attrition but the study on it is also limited to the introduction of the theories rather than the empirical study.This thesis focuses on the study of the language attrition and one of its influencing factor, learning style, presenting the findings of a survey targeted to the college non-English majors which is carried out in 2009 with the empirical research means like conducting surveys, gathering data, administering questionnaires, and making face-to-face interviews. The main objective of the survey is to find out the diversity of the subjects'individual preferences on the English learning styles, the different degrees of the attrition each subject suffers, the relationship between the learning style and the language attrition, the effect of the former on the latter, and how the results serve the practical English teaching.The findings show that the learning styles affects the holders'English achievement and the degree of English attrition. The auditory learning style is helpful to prevent the listening attrition; The visual, analytic style and the high tolerance of ambiguity contribute positively to avoid the reading attrition; On writing, the holders of global, sequential or visual style suffer less; The subjects who are extraverted or holding the auditory style suffer less attrition of oral English.The research findings will make the English learners clear of the preference of which kinds of English learning styles contribute positively to their English acquisition, and assist the educators to truly operate the teaching from the students' individual differences and take the effective measures to better maintain the students' acquired proficiency which makes the learners more qualified in the English learning and properly adjust their own learning styles to effectively prevent or even avoid the second language attrition.