The Investigation And Analysis Of English Vocabulary Attrition And Relearning In Junior High School

At present, the foreign researches of language attrition have covered all aspects of the language, and the system is also becoming mature. With the deepening of the research, the discussion of language components becomes a focus in the study of language attrition. It mainly includes three basic branches—phonetic attrition, vocabulary attrition and grammatical attrition(lexical and syntactic).Vocabulary is the basic component of language and the foundation of language learning, thus becoming the focus of the researches. In comparison, the domestic researches on the language attrition are insufficient, only limited to the translation of foreign achievements of infancy. The empirical researches of the lexical attrition are poor, especially the researches of vocabulary attrition in junior school. The author made this paper which is reviewed on the basis of predecessors’ research results, supported by language attrition theory and the theory of vocabulary learning, in the form of vocabulary teaching and vocabulary test, and using SPSS19.0 software to compare and analyze the survey data so as to examine the effects of initial learning and relearning. This paper used Pearson test to explore the Correlation between learning and relearning, furthermore, from which to prove the great advantage of relearning for students’ English vocabulary learning in junior high school.The research consists of three steps. Firstly, the subjects learn Word List One for the first time. Then they are asked to do Test One and finish Vocabulary Knowledge Scale to see if they wholly master the words. Secondly, six weeks later, three words that the subjects cannot recognized are selected. Then these words mix with the same number of new words and compose Word List Two and these words are presented to the subjects to learn. Thirdly, the learning result is tested by Test Two after three weeks. It aims to assure that if there is a better result of the learned words after same time relearning than the new words. The fourth step is to know subjects’ English vocabulary learning strategies and attitudes change by questionnaires for the second time.The investigation and the analysis of the data show that the effect of relearning is obviously better than initial learning. Following are some suggestions for junior high school students’ vocabulary teaching and learning based on the whole research: Firstly, cultivating and stimulating students’ motivation and interest in English learning; Secondly, we can regard “relearning ”as a strategy and method in vocabulary teaching; Lastly, educators should learn the theory about language attrition, do research,and put the study of language attrition on the agenda.