The Effect Of Vocabulary Learning Strategies On Vocabulary Attrition Among College Students In China

Language attrition is usually considered as the reversed side of languageacquisition, which has been studied for decades. As a newly established study field,language attrition has attracted a lot of attention from language researchers since theConference on the Loss of Language Skill in Philadelphia in1980. Early definitionsof language attrition are lack of precision, so nowadays people tend to believe thatlanguage attrition refers to the non-pathological decrease in a language that hadpreviously been acquired by an individual (K pke&Schmid,2004:5).All levels of language may suffer attrition, among which vocabulary is the mostvulnerable one, mainly due to its complex and unstable nature. On account of itsfundamental importance to a language, vocabulary attrition has always been the focusof research on language attrition. Therefore, vocabulary attrition is of both theoreticaland practical significance, especially in China, where English has long beenestablished as a compulsory school subject. Every learner has been confronted withthe difficulty of how to maintain the vocabulary knowledge they acquired at schoolwith efforts.One of the main tasks of vocabulary attrition research is to find out those variablesthat may exert influences on vocabulary attrition. Ni（2007） proclaimed that anyvariables that influence language acquisition should be explored in order to studylanguage attrition. Actually, in the field of vocabulary attrition, many variables havebeen found to have influences on vocabulary attrition, and these variables consist ofboth linguistic and nonlinguistic ones, most of which have also been proved toinfluence vocabulary acquisition (Li&Ren,2011:122). As an important variable invocabulary acquisition, vocabulary leaning strategies have been rarely explored in thefield of vocabulary attrition. Based on previous studies, this study aims to make afurther exploration on the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies andvocabulary attrition.The subjects of this study were96second-year non-English majors randomlychosen from Ocean University of China. And this study continued from June toSeptember in2011, aiming to study vocabulary attrition of the subjects afterthree-month English non-use since the determination of formal English classes atschool and their vocabulary learning strategy preference, based on which a tentativeexploration on the relationship between vocabulary attrition and vocabulary learningstrategies will be given.In this study, instruments including the Questionnaire of Vocabulary LearningStrategies, the Questionnaire of Vocabulary Learning Time and the Vocabulary Testwere used to collect data at two stages. The first stage was in June,2011when thesubjects finished their formal English classes at school and at this time vocabularyattrition just began. At this stage, the Vocabulary Test, the Questionnaire ofVocabulary Learning Strategies, and the Questionnaire of Vocabulary Learning Timewere used to collect data of the subjects’ vocabulary level prior to attrition,vocabulary learning strategy preference and vocabulary leaning time respectively. Thesecond stage was carried out on the same day of three months later, that is, after threemonths since the determination of the formal English classes at school. The same Vocabulary Test and the Questionnaire of Vocabulary Learning Time wereadministered to the subjects to collect data of subjects’ vocabulary level andvocabulary learning time after and during three-month attrition period. And only thosesubjects who showed decrease in both vocabulary test scores and learning time couldbe the finally suitable ones for this study.Based on the analysis of data, this study finds that:1.72final subjects sufferedvocabulary attrition three months after they stopped learning English regularly, withthe attrition rate being as high as23%;2. it is also found that all the final subjects (72)tend to use cognitive strategies more frequently than strategies of the other categories.Differences are found that in general, subjects of the low and medium attrition groupsused vocabulary learning strategies more frequently than those of the high attritiongroup. Additionally, subjects of low and medium attrition prefer affective strategieswhile social strategies are preferred by subjects of high attrition; and3. at the macrolevel, among the four strategy categories, affective and cognitive strategy categoriesare proved to be significantly and negatively correlated to vocabulary attrition. Themetacognitive and social strategy categories only show negative correlation. At themicro level, all the59vocabulary learning strategies are statistically proved to benegatively correlated to vocabulary attrition, that is, the more use of vocabularylearning strategies, the less vocabulary attrition, among which17strategies aresignificantly correlated to vocabulary attrition. Finally, on the basis of the aboveconclusions, some implications for vocabulary learning and teaching are given.