Language Use And Lexical Attrition: Do They Change Over Time (Published)
The issue of language use has already been assumed to be an important predicting factor for language attrition. Intuitively, it makes perfect sense that second or foreign language learners who make little use of a language experience more attrition than ones who use the language more frequently. Therefore, the availability or the lack of opportunities to use the language could influence the amount of language attrition, let alone an essential variable like vocabulary knowledge. Such language use factors must be considered in any model concerned with explaining FL attrition, and the primary purpose of the present study is to provide evidence about this. It attempts to examine a population of college acquired English among college leavers who vary in the extent to which they have been able to maintain contact with the target language over time. The findings demonstrated that participants rated many of their patterns of contact with English and vocabulary in particular somewhat lower after the end of formal instruction. Furthermore, the most powerful predictor appears to be the use of the internet which is strongly linked to better retention of productive vocabulary test over time.
Keywords: English, Language, Language Attrition, Literature, Vocabulary