An Empirical Study On Non-English Major College Students' Attrition Sequence Of English Inversions In Chinese Context

Language attrition is regarded as the phenomenon that recession of language capacity occurs while bilingual users gradually cease using a certain language for a long time.Since 1980 s,the studies of language attrition have emerged in linguistic field,including the formation mechanisms,affecting factors,theories of hypothesis,etc.Besides,as the inverse process of language acquisition,many researches on language attrition sequence have been conducted by a host of Chinese scholars.Many empirical studies focus on language attrition sequence among Chinese EFL learners at both syntactic level and lexical level.However,the studies on the attrition of English inversions are limited,so studying on college students' attrition sequence of English inversions in Chinese Context is of great significance.Based on the previous studies of language attrition,the present study makes Jakobson Regression Hypothesis as the theoretical framework,and aims to investigate the attrition sequence and affecting factors of English inversions among 160 nonEnglish major college Chinese EFL learners.The research questions have been addressed as follows: 1)Does attrition of English inversions exist among Chinese college EFL learners? And does the attrition sequence follow Jakobson Regression Hypothesis? 2)How the factors of gender difference,foreign language proficiency level before attrition and exposure to foreign language affect the attrition of English inversions in the present study and which factor is the most closely related to the attrition of English inversions?To answer the research questions mentioned above,the present study adopts crosssectional approach for investigation.Firstly,the pilot study conducted on 35 nonEnglish major freshmen was introduced to investigate their English inversions attrition,which was also used as the attrition baseline for the result of the final study.The conclusion of pilot study indicated that all that 35 subjects have mastered the usage of English inversions.All the data collected from the pilot study was analyzed by Oneway ANOVA and Multiple Comparison in SPSS 23.0.The result of the pilot study indicated that there was no significant difference between subjects' performances in the test of English inversions of different difficulty levels.To explore the existence of attrition and the attrition sequence of English inversions among Chinese non-English major college EFL learners,the final study of 160 junior college students was conducted to make a comparison with the result of the pilot study.Firstly,applying Microsoft Office Excel(2007)was applied to demonstrate line charts of mean scores;then,the descriptive analysis,One-way ANOVA and Multiple Comparison again adopted to analyze the collected data in the final study;Lastly,the independent sample t-test and the Pearson Correlation would be applied to analyze how these factors affecting subjects' performance in the English inversions test,moreover,Regression Analysis and Linear Fitting were used for exploring the most significant factor affecting the attrition of English inversions in the final study.After discussion,the conclusions are drawn: 1)the subjects in present study suffer different degrees of English inversions attrition,and the attrition sequence of English inversions in Chinese context echoes the prediction of “Inverse Relation Hypothesis” in Jakobson Regression Hypothesis,which is regarded as “best learned,last attrited.” 2)three factors are found to be responsible the attrition of English inversions in the empirical study,namely,foreign language proficiency level before attrition,gender difference and exposure to the foreign language.Moreover,with the prediction of Regression Analysis and the verification of Linear Fitting,it is concluded that proficiency language level before attrition is the most significant factor related to the attrition of English inversions in Chinese context.