A Correlative Study On The Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Reading Strategies Employed By Ethnic Minority Non-English Majors In Xinjiang

In the course of English learning, learners are inevitably involved in ambiguity situations atevery linguistic level, such as vocabulary, syntax, etc. When facing with strange, ambiguousand complex learning materials, learners show different degrees of tolerance. Tolerance ofambiguity is used to measure learners’ psychological change in ambiguous situation.On the basis of concept of tolerance of ambiguity and its measurement from theperspectives of psychology and linguistics, and with related researches on English readingstrategies, the author conducts questionnaire surveys and interviews among123second yearethnic minority non-English majors from4universities in Xinjiang and explores, quantitativelyand qualitatively, the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and the use of readingstrategies employed by ethnic minority students in Xinjiang. The questionnaires in this studyare Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale designed by Ely and questionnaire ofreading strategies adapted from Oxford (1990) and Liu Yichun (2002). The data analysis iscarried out by SPSS19.0. The results indicate that123ethnic minority non-English majorsshow a moderate level of tolerance of ambiguity, without the cases of extremely high level oftolerance of ambiguity or extreme intolerance of ambiguity. In English reading, the mostcommonly used strategy by the subjects is the social/affective strategies and then cognitivestrategies. They use metacognitive strategies less frequently. The study also suggests that thereexist significant positive correlations between subjects’ metacognitive strategies, cognitivestrategies and social/affective strategies employed by the subjects. In addition, the correlationanalysis explores that there is a weak positive correlation between the subjects’ tolerance ofambiguity and their use of reading strategies. The subjects’ TOA level, to a certain extent, hasan impact on their choice of the reading strategies. Subjects with high tolerance of ambiguityemploy metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, and social affective strategies morefrequently than the subjects with moderate and low TOA levels. This suggests that high TOAsubjects are more flexible in use of strategies, and more willing to take risk. Moderate TOAlevel subjects employ metacognitive strategies less frequently. The subjects with low tolerance of ambiguity apply reading strategies in characterless and arbitrary manner. However,social/affective strategies are frequently employed by subjects with different TOA levels.The present study also discusses some pedagogical implications on ethnic minority students’English learning and teaching of reading. In the teaching of English reading, teachers shouldgain some awareness of ethnic minority students’ level of TOA, and develop reading strategiestraining programs according to their specific TOA level. Meanwhile, students should be awarethat the ambiguous situation is universal and they should develop self-learning ability accordingto their own learning style and characteristics. In addition, ethnic-minority-oriented Englishtextbooks and programs for strategy training are required to meet the demands of ethnic minoritystudents in English learning.