A Study On The Relation Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Strategy Usage In English Writing

In the process of second language acquisition, English writing becomes animportant and necessary part for students as it not only can reflect students’comprehensive English level, but also is the output of students’ learning ability.However, teachers and researchers found that it is difficult for Chinese students toimprove the English writing ability and achieve more in English writing. Moreover, theprocess of English learning is full of ambiguity because of the difference in culture andcommunication style between China and English speaking countries. All this wouldincrease the difficulty for Chinese students to learn English in the aspect of listening,speaking and reading, as well as writing. So it is so urgent for teachers to help studentsto deal with ambiguity with appropriate tolerance in English learning. And on the otherhand, the effective way to help students to improve the writing performance is to teachthem to use the writing strategy effectively. A large number of researches proved thatthe impact of writing strategy on English writing can not be ignored. So we can see thatthere is an interrelationship among English writing performance, writing strategy andstudents’ tolerance of ambiguity. But what are the correlations among them? Most of theliteratures are concerned with the relationship between TOA and listening, speaking orreading ability in English. Little research was found to involve the aspect of writing.The present study tries to explore the correlation among the English writingperformance, writing strategy and students’ tolerance of ambiguity for Chinesenon-English majors. It aims to find the answers to the following questions. What levelof ambiguity is ideal for the success in second language writing? Does students’ TOAhave any influence on their choice of writing strategies? Do students in different writinglevels use different writing strategies? Subjects in this study were231non-Englishmajors from Hubei University of Technology. Quantitative methods were used to studythe correlation among the English writing performance, writing strategy and TOA forChinese non-English majors. And the questionnaires of the EFL Writing Tolerance ofAmbiguity Scale (EFLWTAS) and EFL Writing Strategy Scale (EFLWSS) are the majorinstruments in this quantitative research. Then statistical analyses were conducted withSPSS software. Based on the quantitative analyses, this dissertation draws the followingconclusions: firstly, there seems to be no significant correlation between TOA andwriting performance, but the students who possess the middle level of TOA gain higherwriting scores in total as well as in the five writing parts of content, organization, word,grammar and mechanism than those with high TOA and low TOA, which leads to theconclusion that moderate level of TOA is ideal for the English writing. Secondly, thelevel of TOA may influence writing process by influencing the use of certain languagelearning strategies. The high TOA group tends to use memory strategy andmetacognitive strategy. Specifically, they tend to use mental associating, revising, usingrhetoric, resourcing, paying attention, planning and evaluating. The middle TOA grouptends to use affective strategy, including imitating, using discourse, outlining, loweringanxiety, self-encouraging, and teacher-cooperating. The low TOA group tends to usecognitive strategy, compensation strategy and social strategy, such as grouping,rereading, translating, selecting, approximating, synonym, discussing feeling withothers and peer-cooperating. Thirdly, students in different writing levels also show thedifferent tendency in the choice of writing strategies. Students who get the high writingscores tend to use cognitive strategy and metacognitive strategy, students who get themiddle writing scores tend to use memory strategy, while students who get the lowwriting scores tend to use compensation strategy, affective strategy and social strategy.The findings of the present research suggest that in second language writing, thetolerance of ambiguity, as an important factor, may affect students’ learning psychology.Teacher should make students aware of their tolerance of ambiguity degree and helpstudents cultivate the moderate TOA degree and use the most appropriate strategies soas to improve the students’ writing ability more effectively. Although there are somelimitations of the study, we believe its findings should provide some revelatory insightsinto the theoretical and practical issues of EFL writing research and writing instruction.