A Study Of Attrition Of Lexical Richness In English Writings By English Majors In China

Lexical attrition as an essential part of language attrition has drawn great attention from researchers. Studies of lexical attrition mainly fall into two categories. The first category deals with the comparison of linguistic representations of attrition between different linguistic systems or within the lexical system. The second focuses on the individual factors and social factors which affect lexical attrition. Although substantial achievements have been accomplished in this field, much remains to be known about lexical attrition in language performance and the research instruments are restricted to vocabulary tests.By using quantitative approach, the present study is conducted to investigate the attrition of lexical richness of English writings by English majors in China. This objective is reached by a detailed analysis of compositions collected before and after the summer vacation in 2014. A total of 46 students majoring in English in Ocean University of China participated in the study and 43 of them took both the pretest and the posttest. The same writing task was conducted twice and finally 86 compositions were valid for the study.With a view to identifying the incidence of attrition, the indices of lexical diversity, lexical sophistication and lexical density in the compositions were calculated and compared by means of Range32 and SPSS 16.0. Overall, the study yields the following findings:(I) In general, lexical attrition does exist in the English writings of English majors. (2) Lexical richness presents a non-linear way of attrition. In terms of lexical diversity, there is no salient difference between the compositions written in the two tests. This indicates that no attrition occurs in lexical diversity. Lexical sophistication is subject to attrition, suggesting that compared with frequently used words, less frequently used words are more vulnerable to attrition. Lexical density is also affected by attrition which indicates that lexical words in the writings are not impervious to attrition.This thesis is composed of five parts. Chapter one is a introduction to the present study. It outlines the research background and presents the objectives, significance and organization of the study. Chapter two reviews relevant literature on lexical attrition and lexical richness. Chapter three is concerned with research design. Research questions, subjects and procedures of the experiment are described in detail. Chapter four deals with the results and discussions. Chapter five is the conclusion of the study. Major findings are summarized followed by implications and limitations of the study. Suggestions of future study are presented in the last part.