An Empirical Study On The Attrition Of English Ed-form In Chinese Context

Language attrition is defined as the loss of a language or a portion of that language by either a speech community or an individual, which means that for the bilingual or multilingual, his ability of using one specific language regresses with time due to the cease or reduction of use. Being a relatively new and ambitious area of language research, language attrition has won increasing popularity among many researchers. Since the conference on the topic Loss of Language Skills is held at the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, a substantial amount of studies with various focuses has been carried out in the field of language attrition from a diverse range of dimensions. However, few domestic researches on foreign language attrition can be found, since the studies in China are still at the stage of theories introduction.Among the existing attrition theories and hypotheses, Regression Hypothesis and Criticial Threshold Theory are the widely used ones, and have been testified in different language contexts. Therefore, the present paper intends to verify whether the two hypotheses can be supported by the data obtained in the study of English ed-form attrition in Chinese context, as well as to analyze the attrition sequence of English ed-form for Chinese learners.Cross-sectional paradigm is adopted because of the limitation of paper time. 158 Chinese former graduates are chosen to be the subjects of the present study. After analyzing the research data, the final conclusions are drawn: (1) The attrition sequence of English ed-form in Chinese context is"First acquired, last attrited; last acquired, first attrited", as predicted by the Regression Hypothesis. (2)"Critical Threshold"is supported in the present study, but its accurate value or range in Chinese context still needs to be verified in further research. (3) The specific relation between first language attrition and second language attrition is not founded in the present study. However, there must be certain correlation between the two types of attrition.