An Empirical Study On Vocabulary Attrition Of Non-English Major College Students

Language attrition, a new discipline, has become popular among researchers at home and abroad. With the deepening exploration, scholars gradually endeavor to language sub-system attrition, especially vocabulary attrition. More and more researchers dedicate into studies on vocabulary attrition and they have achieved fruitful results.Based on Inverse Hypothesis and Selectivity Hypothesis, three study questions are presented as follow:(1) Does general vocabulary attrition occur among different proficiency non-English major juniors; if so, to what degree and in what kind of pattern?(2) How do vocabulary attrition in skill level and context level effect on students with different English proficiency level prior to attrition?(3) Does English proficiency level prior to attrition interact with skill level and context level? Through these three questions, this study is designed to proof the occurrence of general vocabulary attrition and describes the attrition degree and patterns of three groups of non-English major students with Chinese native language. It also explores the selectivity of attrition content on skill level and context level. Thus, it explains the reasons of vocabulary attrition combined with theories. This study is a criterion groups design. Through an English learning questionnaire screening samples, it eventually selects 90 sophomores and 90 juniors respectively as two groups of subjects, whom come form Department of Economics, Minnan Normal University. This study was carried out on June 25 th, 2014. Research instrument, vocabulary level test, contains 15 English words multiple choice, 15 sentence multiple choice, 15 translation and 15 items of completing the blank, incomplete words. Data collected from students are analyzed by descriptive analysis, paired sample T-test and multivariate analysis of variance of SPSS.The results indicate that vocabulary attrition occurs among these students after one year. It echoes with Inverse Hypothesis, English proficiency level prior to attrition performs inversely proportional to quality and quantity of vocabulary attrition. The whole pattern of vocabulary attrition shows to gradually decrease, appearing slow trend after the first acceleration among different proficiency students. Selectivity is justified on vocabulary attrition contents. In skill level, productive skill vocabulary is more vulnerable to attrition than respective aspect, especially the middle group. In context level, attrition becomes serious both in context and non-context vocabulary, but significance is not found. The reason of vocabulary attrition is that different English proficiency level prior to attrition interact with skill level and context level.This tentative research aims to study the existence, selectivity and reasons of vocabulary attrition among Chines non-English major college students. It also provides implications for resisting vocabulary attrition. For teachers, they are required to help students control vocabulary quantitative change, use diversified teaching methods to teach attritable words and adopt targeted teaching to strengthen attritable words. For students, they are expected to ensure the vocabulary input through different ways, to make use of vocabulary strategies based on attrition features and to integrate skills and context with vocabulary learning in order to reinforce memory.