Relationships Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity, Anxiety, And Strategies In Efl Writing Process

Although some informative findings have been obtained from a great deal of research concerning cognitive factors such as learning strategies in second language learning, few studies have hitherto been conducted to detect the connections between affective factors and cognitive factors in second language learning. Considering the important role that second language writing plays in second language education and the situation-specific or domain-specific nature of the individual variables, the present study is designed to examine the relations between writing strategies and affective factors such as tolerance of ambiguity and anxiety in EFL writing process of Chinese college students. Four research questions in the study are: 1) What is the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and anxiety in EFL writing?2) What are the differences in the adoption of writing strategies among learners with different levels of tolerance of ambiguity in EFL writing? 3) What are the interrelationships between tolerance of ambiguity, anxiety, and writing strategies in EFL writing? 4) What are the effects of tolerance of ambiguity, anxiety, and writing strategies on EFL writing performance?In order to find the answers to these questions, the present study uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches with two kinds of experiments: scale-based and product-oriented experiments in the quantitative part of the study and protocol-based and process-oriented experiments in the qualitative part of the study.In the quantitative part of the study, we used scales to elicit subjects'self-reports regarding their tolerance of ambiguity, anxiety, and writing strategy preferences in EFL writing and employed an EFL writing task to examine their EFL writing performance. The scales were specially developed for the study due to the fact that few studies have been found to have produced relevant scales for college students in the context of current China. Meanwhile, a pilot study was conducted to establish the reliability and validity of these scales for the formal experiments. A total of 256 subjects were involved in the study. The data obtained from the quantitative part of the study were processed with SPSS 13.0 for descriptive analysis, correlation analysis, ANOVA test, and multiple regression analysis.In the qualitative part of the study, we conducted a think-aloud experiment mainly to illustrate the different uses of writing strategies between groups with high and low EFL writing tolerance of ambiguity. Four subjects were chosen from the quantitative part of the study with two from the low EFL writing tolerance of ambiguity group and two from the high EFL writing tolerance of ambiguity group. After the think-aloud protocols were transcribed, segmented, and coded, specific writing strategies were identified, categorized and analyzed.The main findings of this study fell into four perspectives: 1) There are individual differences in the level of anxiety among the subjects with different levels of tolerance of ambiguity in EFL writing. Specifically, subjects with high tolerance of ambiguity had a low level of anxiety in EFL writing. Conversely, subjects with low tolerance of ambiguity were more anxious during EFL writing. 2) Individual differences in tolerance of ambiguity result in differences in the adoption of strategies in EFL writing. A descending tendency was detected in frequency occurrences of writing strategies from subjects with low tolerance of ambiguity to subjects with high tolerance of ambiguity. Specifically, subjects with low tolerance of ambiguity used more cognitive and compensatory strategies than subjects with high tolerance of ambiguity in EFL writing. 3) Both tolerance of ambiguity and anxiety influence the final adoption of writing strategies in the EFL writing process. In general, subjects with low tolerance of ambiguity had high anxiety, adopting cognitive and compensatory strategies more frequently, but metacognitive and affective strategies less frequently than subjects with high tolerance of ambiguity in EFL writing. 4) Both EFL writing tolerance of ambiguity and EFL writing strategies primarily exert indirect effects on EFL writing performance, while EFL writing anxiety has the greatest direct effect on EFL writing performance. EFL writing anxiety seems to act as a mediator through which tolerance of ambiguity and writing strategies are able to influence EFL writing performance. Specifically, subjects who had poor writing performance were usually those with low tolerance of ambiguity, high anxiety, and adopting more writing strategies, particularly cognitive and compensatory strategies in EFL writing, whereas subjects with high tolerance of ambiguity and low anxiety in EFL writing adopted less writing strategies in general, and have good EFL writing performance.This dissertation concludes that tolerance of ambiguity, anxiety, and writing strategies are interrelated with each other in EFL writing and influence EFL writing performance. Although there are some limitations of the study, we believe its findings should provide us with some revelatory insights into the theoretical and practical issues of EFL writing research and writing instruction. It is not proposed that attention to affect will provide the solution to all learning problems. We hope it can be beneficial for language teachers to choose to focus at times on affective questions in EFL learning and provide empirical support to relevant theories as well as practical implications for creating student-centered instructional designs that enable students to be aware of the limitations of their habitual learning styles, overcome their affective obstacles to learning, and adopt effective learning strategies to improve their EFL learning.