A Correlation Study On EFL Learners' Tolerance Of Ambiguity, Reading Competence And Reading Strategy Utilization

With the development of foreign language learning and teaching, researchers have attached more and more attention to the important role that cognitive factors play in language learning. Tolerance of ambiguity, as an essential cognitive factor, refers to the attitudes that learners hold towards ambiguous, unfamiliar or uncertain situations in learning process, ranging from absolute reception to negative resistance. Research towards tolerance of ambiguity stemmed from the study on intolerance of ambiguity in psychological field by American psychologist Frenkel Brunsuik. Along with the psychologists' research on tolerance of ambiguity, the situation-specific study towards tolerance of ambiguity has also been initiated by linguists, concentrating on the influences that tolerance of ambiguity has on language learning, especially foreign or second language learning. Relevant researches have been conducted on how tolerance of ambiguity, as a cognitive factor, a learning style, a personality and affective factor, impacts second or foreign language learning. Compared with the studies about the other variables that may affect second or foreign language learning as anxiety or motivation, the study about tolerance of ambiguity in relation with second or foreign language learning is still under-cultivated, waiting to be further explored. Meanwhile, the development of learners' reading competence, as one of the most importance language competence, has always been a great concern in the research field of foreign language learning and teaching. Therefore, this study relates tolerance of ambiguity, the important cognitive factor, with reading comprehension and reading strategies and explores the relationships of these elements so as to detect the cognitive variables that may influence learners' reading comprehension.Based on the relevant literatures about tolerance of ambiguity, a quantitative research has been conducted in the present thesis. 167 Chinese non-English-major university students are taken as the subjects. The reading comprehension test and Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale as well as reading strategy questionnaire are selected as the instruments. And statistical analyses are made with SPSS (Statistical Product and Service Solutions), version 12.0.The conclusions are obtained as described below.1) Generally speaking, the subjects of Chinese non-English-major university students have shown a moderate level of tolerance of ambiguity, without the cases of extremely high level of TOA or extreme intolerance of ambiguity. Yet, among all of the subjects within the moderate range of tolerance of ambiguity, most of them have comparatively lower tolerance of ambiguity, which needs further cultivating and improving.2) A significant positive correlation has been found between students' tolerance of ambiguity and reading competence. Students with higher tolerance of ambiguity tend to perform better in reading comprehension, compared to those with lower tolerance of ambiguity.3) Tolerance of ambiguity has also been found to have great impact on students' use of reading strategies. For those learners with comparatively higher tolerance of ambiguity, there exist highly significantly positive correlations between tolerance of ambiguity and the utilization of various reading strategies. Compared with those less tolerant students, they tend to use different kinds of reading strategies more frequently, effectively and flexibly to serve different reading purposes so as to achieve better reading comprehension.Finally, a few suggestions have been made about future college English language teaching on the basis of this investigation and the author's own teaching practice.