An Empirical Research On English Vocabulary Attrition In Junior High School

English learning includes acquisition and attrition(Lambert,1982).The causes which may lead to attrition include language level before attrition,attrition period and foreign language exposure,age,foreign language learning method,emotion,reading and writing ability.English acquisition doesn't mean eternal memory,after a period of time,when you stop using English,attrition takes place.Attrition is a natural phenomenon,can't be stopped,but it can be remedied by relearning.Relearning hypothesis(Hansen,1980)is a theory of language attrition,which says that residue of the acquired language knowledge remains in the brain,can be activated by relearning,to achieve reconstruction and consolidation of the language knowledge.This research aims to cope with three questions:(1)How much residue of the words that are learned previously,but can't be recognized remain in human brain?(2)Within the same learning period,what is the effect of relearning?(3)How can relearning solve vocabulary attrition in junior high school?According to this theory,an experiment is designed for this research after Zhang Fengling.First,a pre-test is held to 60 students from Class(1),Grade 3 from No.1 Ganzhou High School on their English learning attitude and English learning methods.The statistics in the pre-test shows that although having acknowledged the importance of vocabulary,they consider memorizing vocabulary as complex and onerous.With limited time and energy,active consolidation and review is impossible for students,which make their initiative of learning English vocabulary greatly reduced.For the teachers,they can do nothing about students' vocabulary attrition,and can only follow the conventional way to get students to memorize words.Teachers are short of effective theories,leading to the low efficiency of memorizing English vocabulary.Subsequently,we should adopt contexts teaching method under the guidance of relearning hypothesis.Finally,the post-test is held.As this survey is to verify vocabulary attrition,and the learning effects combined with relearning hypothesis before and after the experiment,and to verify the improvement of vocabulary attrition with relearning hypothesis,with no guidance on students' vocabulary learning strategies,therefore,while designing Questionnaire II,delete multi-ple choice question 5 and 6 on learning strategies,the other issues,options,are entirely consistent with Questionnaire I.The statistical tool used in this experiment is SPSS19.0.After comparing the statistics in pre-test and post-test,the initial learning and relearning in learning vocabulary,language attrition does happen,but after relearning hypothesis experiment,the residue of acquired vocabulary has been activated,and students' confidence in the English vocabulary learning increased,interest has been also improved apparently,vocabulary attrition has been lessened through the consolidation during relearning.