Patterns of Second Language Retention of Graduates of a Spanish Immersion Program

The attrition of French as a foreign language

“…More or less similar findings are reported by Gardner et al (1985) for selfreported language attrition in a comparable population, and Snow et al (1984) in their study of graduates of a Spanish immersion programme in the U.S.…”

“…On the other hand, there are a number of studies that have observed the opposite: attrition does not set in immediately; there is an initial 'plateau' before retention declines. Edwards (1977) found no loss after 6 months, but significant loss after 12 and 18 months; Messelink & Verkuylen (1984;see also Schumans et al 1985) found no loss after 1 year, but a loss of 15% after 2 years of non-use, and Snow et al (1984) and Grendel & Poppe (1986;also reported in Weltens et al 1986b) did not find (significant) losses after 2 years of non-use, but they did after 4 years. In other words, there are basically two different patterns that have been observed.…”

“…Firstly, there is some evidence to assume that if attrition can be shown to have affected the receptive skills, it will most probably have affected the productive skills (see e.g. Snow et al 1984, andSchumans et al 1985). Secondly, the receptive skills can be tested in a relatively easy way; measuring speaking and writing proficiency would entail all kinds of validity and measurement problems, and require laborious analysis of speech and text products -in case one would opt for a 'free', unguided type of test (cf.…”

Exploring EFL Learners’ Experience of Foreign Language Proficiency Maintenance: A Phenomenological Study

“…Overall, their global skills of French did not undergo attrition but the attrition rate of grammatical skills was much higher than lexical skills. Furthermore, Snow, Padilia, and Campbell (1988) found that the productive skills of the participants were lost sooner and the receptive skills were retained longer. Schneider, Healy, and Bourne (2002) found that the experimental group taught French vocabularies through difficult methods revealed larger improvements across using unfamiliar French words as responses rather than using familiar English words as responses.…”

“…Some scholars explored the evidence of attrition phenomenon in different parts of language knowledge (Berman & Olshtain, 2015;Tomiyama, 2000). On the other hand, others focused on factors and techniques that contribute to language proficiency development (Arevalo, 2010;Bahrick, 1984;Garza, 1991;Huang & Eskey, 2000;Markham, 1999;Rott, 1999;Schneider, Healy, & Bourne, 2002;Snow, Padilia, & Campbell, 1988;Valmori, 2014;Weltens, Van Els, & Schils, 1989;Yashiro, 1992). None of these studies, however, explored and theorized EFL learners' experience of proficiency maintenance.…”