A Dynamic Systems Theory Approach To Factors Affecting English Vocabulary Attrition

Language attrition has usually been regarded as the reverse process of languageacquisition as the loss of language skills due to a period of usage stop. Since theinternational conference “The Loss of Language Skills” was held in PennsylvaniaUniversity in1980, language attrition has become a hot field in linguistic researchesin the past few decades. A series of researches have been made on different aspects oflanguage attrition from different perspectives. Compared with the empirical studies onlanguage attrition within the English speaking countries, the current focus of Englishattrition researches in China has been put on the introduction of the foreignhypotheses and theories at present.In resent years, research focus on language attrition has been transferred onto theattrition of language components. As an essential part of language, vocabulary hasbeen selected to be the research object in this thesis on English attrition. Toinvestigate the linguistic factors which affect the English lexical attrition within theChinese context, an empirical study has been implemented on128non-English majorgraduates in Jinan City, hoping to find out the answers to the following questions: a.Have these non-English major graduates encountered English vocabulary attritionafter they stopped the exposure to English for several years?; b. Which linguisticfactors affect the English vocabulary attrition within the Chinese context?; c.What are the relationships of these influencing linguistic factors?; d. How do theselinguistic factors interact with each other to influence the lexical attrition from theDynamic Systems Theory (DST) perspective?The final findings of the empirical study on English vocabulary attrition of128non-English major graduates in Jinan City indicate: a. The non-English majors haveencountered severe lexical attrition after they graduated since they seldom contactwith or use English in their present jobs within the Chinese context; b. There area number of explicit linguistic factors which affect the English lexical attrition,including lexical frequency, lexical length (the number of syllables), lexical meaning (the number of semantical entries and the image ability); c. Alllinguistic factors combine and interact with each other to affect the Englishvocabulary attrition as a whole. In addition, the influences of these linguisticfactors on lexical attrition have presented some dynamic characteristics from a DSTperspective.Based on the above findings in this thesis, some limitations and suggestions havebeen raised as well. Since a limited number of linguistic factors have beenselected to study English vocabulary attrition of non-English majorgraduates within the Chinese context at some specific time point,future attrition researches had better take a wider range of variablesinto consideration by adopting a longitude and dynamic methodology.The suggestions that more dynamic methodologies and techniques should be adoptedin the future lexical attrition researches from a DST perspective might be helpfultheoretically and practically.