Patterns And Causes Of Attrition Of English As A Foreign Language

Foreign language attrition refers to the loss of language skills by those who have studied and then discontinued the use of a foreign language. As a very common phenomenon, foreign language attrition is an important issue because it occurs in every corner of the world, taking its toll among young and old alike. It was not until the 1980s that experts in circles of foreign language teaching and acquisition began to systematically investigate the nature of attrition, the precise conditions under which it occurs, and the factors that might affect foreign language attrition. After thirty years of research, foreign language attrition study abroad is now "reaching puberty". Notwithstanding recent significant developments, language attrition study is not yet extensive or theoretically sophisticated enough, and it is mainly descriptively oriented. In China, a handful of professionals from psychology and foreign language circles, aware of the importance of attrition study in foreign language teaching and learning, began to introduce language attrition study into China at the beginning of the new millennium. However, they have not begun any systematic empirical study of English language attrition with Chinese English learners as subjects.This dissertation, aimed at studying English attrition exhibited in Chinese college English major graduates, endeavors to answer the following four questions:(1) Does attrition occur in English majors after certain period of disuse, and, if so, to what degree and in what kind of pattern? (2) Are different language skills affected by attrition to the same degree, and if so, do they exhibit the same pattern of development over time? (3) Is there a mirror effect in language attrition, or is the order of attrition in opposition to the order of acquisition? (4) Is the rate of attrition related to the English language use situation in China and/or to the graduates'attitudes towards the English language, and, if so, to what degree?A cross-sectional method is employed in this study because it is economical and time-saving and can be conducted with more variables on a larger number of participants to produce a general profile of a population at a given time.Two instruments were used in this study:an English language test and a questionnaire. Since this research is mainly limited to the measurement of the participants' receptive skills, namely, their listening comprehension skills, lexical knowledge, and reading comprehension skills, the language test is composed of a five-item dictation subtest, a forty-item multiple-choice vocabulary subtest, and a twenty-item multiple-choice reading comprehension subtest. Both the vocabulary and the reading comprehension subtests are composed of "Very Easy Items", "Easy Items", "Difficult Items", and "Very Difficult Items". The questionnaire, mainly adapted from Gardner's classic Attitude/Motivation Test Battery, is composed of 42 items and was used to investigate the relationship between the participants' language attitudes and their language maintenance.The participants of this study were divided into five groups:Group A (newly-enrolled first-year students), Group B (second-year students), Group C (fourth-year students), Group D (English major graduates with two years of disuse of English), and Group E (English major graduates with four years of disuse of English). The participants of Groups A (N=240), B (N =240) and C (N=240) are from 12 universities or colleges of different tiers in both economically developed and underdeveloped areas. The participants of Groups D (N=238) and E (N=240) are even more diverse in nature. They are from 7 provinces or municipalities. They graduated from 186 universities or colleges of different tiers in different areas. Among the participants of Group D,144 are females and 94 are males, aged between 22 and 27, and among those of Group E,154 are females and 86 are males, aged between 24 and 30.Because of the inclusion of the newly-enrolled first-year students in the sample, the investigations were conducted in two sessions:the first on the participants of Groups B, C, D and E in May 2009 and the second on the newly-enrolled first-year students in the middle of October 2009.The analysis of the participants'scores on both the test and the questionnaire, with SPSS 13.0 as the analytical tool, indicates the following:(1) The graduates'general language skills have suffered systematic attrition. (2) The graduates'specific language skills (listening comprehension skills, lexical knowledge and reading comprehension skills) have been seriously eroded by the time of disuse. What is regretfully significant is that the lexical knowledge attrition of the participants of Group E has even regressed to what they had learned in their high school days. (3) English attrition develops in the following order:What is learned first will be retained last and what is learned last will be lost first. In other words, the order of attrition is in opposition to the order of acquisition. (4) The participants'language maintenance is substantially influenced by their overall language attitudes (r=0.713), and, specifically, by their attitudes towards English language learning and use in China, their attitudes towards the English language, their attitudes towards other English language learners, their interest in the English language, their attitudes towards English language learning (0.705≤r≤0.761), and any item of the questionnaire about the participants'English language attitudes (0.313≤r≤0.759). Furthermore, the participants'overall language attitudes influence their maintenance of listening comprehension skills, lexical knowledge and reading comprehension skills (0.604≤r≤0.872).This study, aimed at revealing the pattern and causes of attrition of English as a foreign language, contributes a lot to the study of foreign language attrition. First, this study has found a pattern of attrition of English learned as a foreign language by Chinese college students, and that the pattern is fairly consistent with the "Forgetting Curve Theory". Second, the findings of the causes of attrition might help produce measures to curb attrition or at least to slow down its rate. Third, this study, as the first systematic empirical study of English attrition done in China, has enriched the international studies of foreign language attrition. Finally, this study, though far from perfect, has put forward a tentative theoretical framework for future English attrition study in China.