A Study On The Correlation Between Reading Comprehension And Tolerance Of Ambiguity

There are ambiguities in all the languages, besides English. While learning English, students will meet all kinds of ambiguities. Maybe they will get confused and think it difficult to learn English well. In order to overcome this difficulty, students must have the ability of Tolerance of Ambiguity(TOA). TOA is one of the cognitive variables which is infrequently explored despite its practical implications for language learning and teaching. The present study aims at exploring the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and reading comprehension. 58 students from No.1 Middle School of Liuyang were chosen as its subjects. Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale was selected to assess degree of TOA of all the participants. A reading comprehension test was designed to collect information on students' performance in reading tasks. After that, statistical analyses were conducted with SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science), Version 11.0.Based on the literature available and the statistical analyses mentioned above. The following conclusions are obtained:â‘ There is a positive correlation between TOA and students' overall reading comprehension. Higher TOA tends to lead to better achievement in reading.â‘¡Both skills of drawing inference and reading for specific details are correlated with TOA. Students' skill of reading for inference is more related to his degree of ambiguity tolerance when it is compared with his skill of reading for specific details. There is also a positive correlation between the two reading skills.â‘¢The degree of difficulty affects the relationship between the achievement in reading and TOA.The findings of the present investigation may provide insights into both the language learning process and the language teaching method.