A Study On The Correlation Between Senior High School Students’ Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Their Use Of Listening Strategies

With the rising of researches on individual differences and the releasing of English Curriculum Standards for Regular High School(2017 edition),the ability to use learning strategies among senior high students is attracting more and more attention.Considering that learning strategies are closely related to tolerance of ambiguity,the two variables are worthy of further research.Though researches about learning strategies of senior high school students are in large amount and researches about tolerance of ambiguity are gradually emerging,studies about the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and listening strategies of senior high school students are still very limited.Based on previous studies of tolerance of ambiguity and listening strategies,this research takes Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis as the theoretical framework,aiming to investigate the current situation of tolerance of ambiguity among senior high school students;the current situation of listening strategy use among senior high school students and the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and listening strategy use.The research methods combined both quantitative and qualitative methods.The subjects were 242 senior high school students from four different schools in Baoding and Cangzhou.Questionnaires that included tolerance of ambiguity inventory and listening strategy scale were used to collect quantitative data.During the process of the study,227 effective questionnaires are collected with 15 questionnaires not completed according to the requirement.SPSS 26.0 is employed to analyze the collected data for the descriptive and correlation analysis.In addition,the subjects are carefully chosen to take part in an interview which can provide some supportive information for the analysis results.The conclusions of the study are listed below:In general,most of the subjects in the investigation have relatively lower level of tolerance of ambiguity.What’s more,the subjects’ language listening strategies use is at the medium level.The frequency of using these strategies ranks from the highest to the lowest in the following sequence: social/affective strategy,cognitive strategy and meta-cognitive strategy.Lastly,the research finds that there is significantly positive correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and learners’ listening strategy use.The level of tolerance of ambiguity can influence language learners’ strategies use and choice.Among the three major listening strategies,tolerance of ambiguity has the strongest positive correlation with metacognitive strategies.Cognitive strategies rank next.Social/affective strategies have the weakest correlation with tolerance of ambiguity.Based on the research results,the study provides some implications for language teachers and learners,with the hope of offering some enlightenment to both teachers’ teaching and learners’ learning.Besides,the limitations of the present research are discussed and some suggestions for further research are put forward as well.