An Empirical Study on the Attrition Sequence of English Interrogative Structures in Chinese Context

Yan Liu

doi:10.4236/ojml.2014.45052

Abstract

In view of the important role that language attrition plays in language learning and teaching, this study is designed to probe into Chinese adult EFL learners’ attrition sequence of English interrogations. The participants investigated in this study are 243 Chinese EFL graduates who had graduated for at least two years. The main measurement employed is a questionnaire, with 40 items of English interrogative sentences included. It is detected that the attrition sequence roughly reflects the inversed pattern of acquisition sequence of English interrogations in Chinese context, which echoes with the assumption of Jakobson’s Regression Hypothesis. The findings also shed light on English teaching and learning in China. As Regression Hypothesis suggests that language components might be lost in the reverse order in which they are acquired, learners are expected to timely review acquired language skills prone to attrition. In addition, it is hoped that understanding some of the dynamic processes of language retention and attrition will increase teachers’ and learners’ awareness and ability to make their own personal observations and to help keep EFL learners’ language abilities.

Highlights

At present, a considerable body of research has been carried out in the field of language acquisition
The Regression Hypothesis is a significant one, describing attrition sequence, i.e. the order in which a linguistic feature is attrited. It advocates that language components might be lost in the reverse order in which they are acquired, i.e. the attrition sequence is “a recapitulation in reverse of the acquisition sequence” (Hansen, 1980: p. 169)
It is detected that the attrition sequence roughly reflects the inversed pattern of acquisition sequence of English interrogations in Chinese context, which echoes with Jakobson’s Regression Hypothesis

Summary

Introduction

A considerable body of research has been carried out in the field of language acquisition. Y. Liu guing question which has attracted hardly any attention is: how much of these (often laboriously) acquired skills are retained over longer periods of time when they are not being used? Up to 1980, did the issue start to attract some scholarly attention and did language attrition become a formal discipline in the filed of language research. As the inverse process of language acquisition, language attrition, sometimes called language loss (Pauwels, 1986) or language death (Schmidt, 1985), refers to the loss of any language or any portion of a language by an individual or a speech community. It’s the phenomenon that learners’ ability of using an acquired language regresses with time due to cease or reduction of use (Ni, 2006)

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