An Investigation Into Tolerance Of Ambiguity And English Grammar Acquisition In Senior High Schools

Ambiguity exists widely in human language, and no one kind of language can be precisely concise. For Chinese learners, in the complex process of English study, a great amount of apparently contradictory or ambiguous information is encountered, especially in grammar learning. English is hypotaxis and inanimate, while Chinese is parataxis and animate. The differences between the two languages make it difficult for Chinese people to learn English. However, different learners have different learning style and they treat the ambiguity or contradictory information distinctly. As Tolerance of Ambiguity was invited into second language acquisition, people are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of it. In China, study on TA has made some progress, but the study is not wide enough. Most researches on TA and language teaching focus on the empirical study in classroom teaching; researchers examine the relationship between TA and some specific aspects of teaching and try to explore the teaching strategies, but some other aspects like grammar still need to be covered.Participants in this study are 146 Grade 3 students of arts and science in regular senior high schools. The main method to collect data is questionnaire, and some other methods are also used in the investigation for more detailed information, such as classroom observation and individual interview. The thesis aims to figure out students'level of TA and GA and try to invite a new angle to grammar learning and teaching by analyzing the relationship between TA and gender, major and the level of GA. Based on the literature available and the statistical analysis by SPSS 13.0, the following results are obtained: 1) the level of TA is in a normal distribution: students'TA is in the middle level; 2) the level of GA is in a normal distribution: the level of GA is relatively low; 3) the male group and the female group have significant differences in TA on listening, speaking, reading and writing; 4) the arts students and the science students haven't significant different TA on English learning; 5) students with higher TA will do better in grammar acquisition to some extent. All the findings of the present investigation have both theoretical and pedagogical implication and may provide insights into grammar learning and teaching process. Confined to the poor research conditions and the limitation of the researcher's ability, there are several limitations in the present study and further studies still need to be covered.