An Empirical Study of Lexical Attrition of English Major Graduates

Language proficiency of English major graduate students in China is generally considered higher than that of English major undergraduate students. The fact, however, is a different story. The phenomenon that a gradual declination of the language proficiency of the L2 will take place, once L2 learners stop or reduce language learning, is known as language attrition. This study investigated the lexical attrition of English major graduate students in four Chinese universities. Vocabulary learning strategies from the perspective of an implicit curriculum are then put forward.