An Empirical Study on Attrition of English Negation among College Students in China

Language attrition, the adverse process of language learning and acquisition, is defined as the loss of a language by either a speech community or an individual. Language attrition can be divided into first language attrition and second language attrition. Gardner (1985) defined foreign language attrition as the loss of foreign language ability resulting from stop of use for a long time. Based on the achievements of the previous scholars, the author in this paper chose negation as the object of the study, investigated the Chinese college students' attrition of English knowledge and skills after their systematic English learning ended. On the base of the study of four-stage of negation acquisition by Kay Ahmad and according to the situation of English learning in China, the author added the fifth stage of English negation, explored and answered the following questions: I. Does negation attrition of English learners in China support Jakobson's Regression Hypothesis? 2. As for English attrition, is there a critical threshold for English learners in China? The author selected 143 applicable copies as the subjects, and input all the data into computer to process them by applying software SAS 6.12. The findings indicate that Chinese college students do undergo attrition after they stop systematic English learning. The study also tests and proves Jakobson's Regression Hypothesis. That is, "First learned, last forgotten; Last learned, first forgotten". The English knowledge and skills of the students who have a high proficiency of English when their systematic English learning ends are more resistant to attrition, which shows that for Chinese students, there exists critical threshold when studying English.