An Empirical Study Of Language Attrition Of Middle School English Teachers Based On Dynamic System Theory

Language development includes two aspects:language acquisition and language attrition.From the dynamic point of view,language development does not follow a simple linear process,but an irregular,unbalanced,and constantly changing nonlinear process.In the process of language acquisition,the development of language skills is not the superposition of linguistic knowledge such as phonetics,vocabulary and grammar,nor is it the process from one language stage to another,but a dynamic process in which both"progress" and "regression" exist in it.There are many intersections between language attrition and dynamic system theory.For example,the critical threshold hypothesis of language attrition and the sensitivity of the initial state in dynamic system theory are of great significance to the whole system,there is consistency between them.Dynamic system theory believes that the system will fall into a "stagnation" state to a certain extent,and the system can only move forward if it breaks through this state,and this attrition state is the phenomenon that appears on almost every language stages.Therefore,language learners should find a suitable method to effectively slow down the rate of language attrition.From the perspective of dynamic system theory,this thesis mainly investigates the language attrition of some middle school English teachers after they begin their work,and analyzes the internal and external factors that affect teachers' foreign language attrition and puts forward corresponding suggestions.The research focuses mainly on the following three questions:(1)What are the features of middle school English teachers'language attrition?(2)What are the main reasons or factors of middle school English teachers' language attrition?(3)How to build a language attrition inhibition mechanism to reduce or prevent the language attrition of English teachers?In this study,the author investigates four middle school teachers in Tongliao and two middle schools in Guizhou Province.Questionnaires,interviews and classroom visiting are used to collect and analyze the data.Firstly,the questionnaires are used to investigate teachers' background information,self-evaluation,behavioral awareness and their attitudes towards language,frequency of language use,learning behavior and teachers'professional development status,and SPSS 16.0 is used to collect and analyze the data.Secondly,for there are also some existing problems in the questionnaire,then the author carries out interviews and classroom visiting to investigate whether teachers themselves pay attention to their own language attrition,and analyze the causes of language attrition from the perspective of dynamic system theory.Finally,according to the findings above,some effective strategies and methods are put forward to slow down the rate of language attrition from the perspective of English teachers and school leaders,so as to improve and maintain teachers' foreign language proficiency and ability,and improve teaching quality and promote the common development for both teachers and students.The results of this study can be summarized as follows:(1)English teachers in middle school have experienced language attrition more obviously in the process of their teaching practice,and the degree of attrition is positively related to the age of teaching.Language attrition and acquisition have presented "mirror" image.(2)The attrition among the four language skills of listening,speaking,reading and writing is different.It is closely related to the teaching practice of the teachers,and the attrition process is influenced by the critical threshold.(3)Teachers' language attrition is influenced by both internal and external factors,and they interacts with each other and are in common with the dynamic process of language development.(4)Language attrition of middle school English teachers is influenced by age,gender,educational background,professional background,motivation,and English proficiency before they suffer from attrition,attrition time,time of language exposure,post-service training and other factors.Among them,the proficiency before attrition,the time of attrition and the amount of language contact are the significant factors which affected teachers' English proficiency.This study confirms that in a psychological point of view language attrition is in accordance with the process of the Forgetting Curve Theory:negative acceleration,and they suffer from language attrition like the state "from fast to slow,from more to less".In addition,this thesis analyzes language attrition from the perspective of dynamic system theory,and it is also influenced by both internal and external factors.And it steps much further than previous empirical studies.Due to the limitations of objective conditions,the study also has some limitations,such as:the coverage of this experiment is too small(It only chooses English teachers as samples who come from four-tier cities,and it cannot represent all the middle school English teachers in China),the research methods are not perfect enough and the author lacks of experience.There are many uncontrollable factors in this empirical research.Therefore,the author also puts forward some related suggestions for future research.