Abstract
Since language attrition was formally recognized at the conference on the “Attrition of Language Skills” at the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, the past three decades saw the numerous studies and researches on it. Language attrition refers to a constant overall regression of language ability with decreased or ceased language use. Language attrition as the inverse process of language acquisition provides a brand-new perspective for language acquisition study. Thus, language acquisition study is incomplete without study on language attrition. Most of related researches and studies of language attrition have been finished in European, American and Japanese contexts. A good academic harvest is reaped by foreign scholars, such as Seliger, Sharwood, Bahrick, Hasan, Tomiyama, Gardner, Kopke, Lambet, Weltens and so forth. In China, despite of many achievements have been made in field of language attrition, little attrition has been paid to the language attrition study. Language attrition still stays at the theory-introducing stage. Empirical studies are sporadic. This paper will try to analyze English attrition degree from the perspective of vocabulary among college students of non-English majors in universities for nationalities, find whether attrition difference exists in English vocabulary, that is, which kind of words are more liable to be attrited.
Highlights
In the past, major emphasis was put on “what to learn”, “how to learn” and “what has been learned” in the field of foreign language acquisition
Since language attrition was formally recognized at the conference on the “Attrition of Language Skills” at the University of Pennsylvania in 1980, the past three decades saw the numerous studies and researches on it
Language attrition as the inverse process of language acquisition provides a brand-new perspective for language acquisition study
Summary
Major emphasis was put on “what to learn”, “how to learn” and “what has been learned” in the field of foreign language acquisition. Little attention was paid to “what to do after the acquisition” or “how to maintain the language proficiency once acquired”. The effortless feeling pushes learners to wonder how to maintain language proficiency and improve their language skills. Many scholars have conducted their researches from the acquisition level to find the way to solve this problem. Much of their attention should be directed to language attrition. Comparing with the research on language acquisition, study on language attrition is a relatively new enterprise. This study falls into the domain of language attrition
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