The Impact Of EFL Learners' Lexical Learning Strategies On Their Lexical Attrition

Language attrition has been viewed as the inverse process of language acquisition. It has been described as the phenomenon that the bilingual or multilingual's ability of using one specific language regresses with time due to cease or reduction of use.The attrition research published in English has covered a wide spectrum of languages, these researches were mainly taken in European, American as well as Japanese context. However, language attrition has received little attention in China. Till now, there are only some review studies (Zhong Shuneng, 2003; Cai Hansong, Zhou Rong, 2004; NiChuanbin, 2006, 2007, 2008). Lexical learning strategy is an important factor in the field of lexical acquisition, and lots of researches focus on the relationship between lexical learning strategy and lexical acquisition. But no empirical research has been done so far on the lexical learning strategy as a predictable variable of lexical attrition process.The present research is designed to investigate into the influence of lexical learning strategy on lexical attrition amongst Chinese EFL learners. Therefore, there are three questions involved: (1) Can Lexical learning strategy influence lexical attrition? (2) Does Lexical proficiency prior to attrition affect lexical attrition? (3) Do Lexical learning strategy and Lexical proficiency prior to attrition mutually affect lexical attrition?A quantitative approach is adopted in this study. Since a lot of Science Schools only offer English courses from the first year to the third year, there are no English courses in the forth year. Thus, this study chooses the summer holiday and the first semester as the attrition period. Subjects of the present research are 124 senior students chosen randomly from Chongqing Jiaotong University. Among the 124 participants, only 108 participants satisfied the following two requirements: (1) have taken the final Lexical exam in June, 2010. (2) have not studied English during the six months. All the 108 initial subjects finished the whole test of the research. However, 33 of them showed a gain instead of a loss in scores as they actually read some English materials during this period. Therefore, only 75 are actually suitable for the research.The instruments used in the study includes: a questionnaire entitled Inventory of Lexical Learning Strategies (ILLS), which was borrowed from O'Malley and Chamot (1990) and adjusted learning according to the Chinese learners' characteristics; their final lexical exam in June, 2010 and another simulation lexical exam designed according to the New College English Curriculum Requirements of 2004 for non-English majors. It contains three steps. (1) A questionnaire entitled Inventory of Lexical Learning Strategies (ILLS) is administered. (2) The students' lexical scores in their final exam in June, 2010 are collected. These scores are taken as the lexical proficiency level prior to the lexical attrition. (3) Another simulation lexical exam is administered 6 months later. The scores of the exam are taken as the lexical proficiency level after the lexical attrition. Then, the SPSS 13.0 is applied to do the Two-Way ANOVA.The findings of the research can be summarized as follows: 1) Lexical learning strategy and the lexical attrition are negatively correlated, that is, the more strategies the subjects use, the less their lexical attrition; the less strategies the subjects use, the more their lexical attrition 2) Lexical proficiency prior to lexical attrition and the lexical attrition degree are negatively correlated too, that is, the higher the subjects' lexical proficiency, the lower their lexical attrition degree; the lower the subjects' lexical proficiency, the higher their lexical attrition degree 3) Lexical learning strategy and Lexical proficiency prior to lexical attrition are correlated with the lexical attrition, that is, the more strategies the subjects use and the higher the Lexical proficiency prior to lexical attrition, the less lexical attrition, the less strategies the subjects use and the lower the Lexical proficiency prior to lexical attrition, the more lexical attrition...