A Study Of Relearning Hypothesis Of English Vocabulary Attrition In Senior Middle Schools

With the development of society and economy, English has become an importanttool for communication in China now. English learning has attracted more and moreattention. On the other hand, traditional English teaching only pays attention tolanguage learning, and neglect the opposite aspect of study——language attrition. Aswe all know, there are so many Chinese English learners. They spend lots of time andmoney, but they don’t get what they deserved, because in our country, Englishlearners have very few opportunities to use English in spite of English classes. Iteasily leads to the lost of earned English knowledge and skills. As a result, Englishteachers and scholars must pay attention to language attrition for English teaching’simprovement.Language attrition consists of the lost of language knowledge and skills, such asknowledge of grammar, vocabulary and reading, writing, oral English, listeningability and so on. Vocabulary plays an increasingly important role in language. It’salmost in the central place in language learning. Most scholars think that vocabularyis the basis of all language skills. For language teaching, vocabulary teachingbecomes an important as well as difficult issue. One should pay attention to theaccumulation of the vocabulary to learn a foreign language well. At the same time, theaccumulation of the vocabulary should be paid attention and study of languageteachers and scholars.Relearning hypothesis has a great advantage to deal with vocabulary attrition.The research before is confined to the theory of relearning hypothesis. This thesisaims to prove the great advantage of the relearning hypothesis by empirical researchand to enlighten English teaching. In this way, English learners can learn Englishvocabulary more effectively.This research process consists of four steps. The first step is to investigateEnglish vocabulary learning strategies by questionnaires for the first time. The secondstep is to know senior middle school teaching condition by interviewing Englishteachers. The third step is relearning hypothesis research about English vocabulary attrition of fifty-three students from Grade One. This step can be divided into threestages. Firstly, the subjects learn Word List One for the first time. Then they are askedto do Test One to see if they wholly master the words. Secondly, four weeks later, thewords that the subjects cannot recognized are selected. Then these words mix with thesame number of new words from Word List Two, and these words are presented tothe subjects to learn. Thirdly, the learning result is tested by Test Two after two weeks.It aims to assure that if there is a better result of the learned words after same timerelearning than the new words. The fourth step is to know subjects’ Englishvocabulary learning strategies and attitudes change by questionnaires for the secondtime.The common problem existed in modern English vocabulary teaching is thatteachers lack efficient teaching strategies by interviewing three teachers. Therelearning research proved that relearning result is far better than the first timelearning, even though these words cannot be recognized. They have “savings” inpeople’s mind. The questionnaires survey states that students’ interest is raised.In conclusion, relearning hypothesis can be proved to deal with vocabularyattrition well to save teachers and students’ time and energy of English classes. At thesame time, relearning hypothesis can be accepted by most students and solve somedifficult problems that reflected by English teachers. So it can be widely used inmodern senior middle schools.