A Study on Language Attrition : Applicability to English Language Education

Vast amount of time, energy and funding have been invested to the development of curriculum, materials, and methodology to further second language learning. With the recent trend of growing concern to the study of second language acquisition, we know quite a lot about its process: how people learn languages. Utilizing the research results of second language acquisition, we tend to consider second language learning solely as a process of acquiring a competence. By contrast, little attention has been paid to the maintenance of these skills once attained and even less once they are no longer used. Error analysis, as a means of second language acquisition research, does not regard forgetting as a cause of errors. Countless-individuals learning a second language cannot avoid forgetting their skills over time, but relatively little research effort has been addressed to the general phenomenon of language loss, or 'language attrition' and almost none to the systematic study of second language skill loss: the period of time it takes for skills to begin to decline, the order of specific feature loss, and methods of avoiding attrition or methodology for efficiently restoring lost skills. This article, viewing language attrition as a sub-field of second language acquisition research, reviews several preceding researches on language attrition and takes consideration to the feasibility of applying language attrition study to the various aspects of English language education