Tolerance Of Ambiguity And English Reading Strategies

Reading is one of a most important part in English learning and teaching. In thepractice of teaching English reading, growing emphasis has been paid on the role oflearners’ cognitive styles. As a kernel factor in cognitive styles, TOA has been studied forits influence on reading process and achievement, among which, an important andmeaningful area is the exploration of correlations between TOA and students’ Englishreading strategy use. However, in the light of second and foreign language teachingreform in the world and the implementation of New Curriculum Standards of English inChina, comparative studies concerning high school learners with different subjectbackgrounds have been found rare both at home and abroad.This issue has recently attracted the attention of some ELT theorists and high schoolEnglish teachers. Numerous studies have been conducted to demonstrate1) there is aclose relationship between students’ selection of reading strategies and their Englishreading scores;2) TOA plays a very important role in English reading strategy choice.Based upon the existing findings, this study aims to dig deeper. The general assumptionsare that there are both style and strategy differences in English reading between thescience and the arts students, and that their TOA levels are different, which will influencetheir reading strategy choice and use.Starting from reviewing related theories and numerous correlation studies of TOA and students’ English learning, this paper carried out a detailed comparative study ofscience and arts students’ TOA and their English reading strategy selection and use,mainly to answer the following four questions:(1) As a whole, how is the high school students’ TOA? What are the differences betweenthe science students’ and the arts students’ TOA?(2) What is the general picture of the high school students’ English reading strategy choice?What are the differences between the science students’ and the arts students’ readingstrategy use?(3) How do the science students and the arts students both with low, moderate, and highTOA choose and use English reading strategies?(4) How do different levels of TOA students (science and arts) train their TOA and choosethe appropriate reading strategies?This study adopted convenient sampling method, and three high schools wereselected as the survey samples: Pianguan No.1Middle School, Shuozhou No.2MiddleSchool, and Xinzhou No.1Middle School, which are all located in the north part ofShanxi Province. There were640subjects in Grade2in total. Through the twoquestionnaires and one interview, all the science and the arts students are divided intothree groups, which are high TOA, moderate TOA, and low TOA. The author makes thecomparative analysis by analyzing the differences between the students in each group.From the analysis of the data, it shows that there are differences between the TOAof both the science and the arts students, which is that the arts students have higher TOAthan the science students as a whole. The percent of high level of TOA for the artsstudents is larger than the science students, and the low level of TOA percent is smallerthan the science students’. There are also differences in their reading strategy use. For thehigh TOA students, the science students use more meta-cognitive strategies than the artsstudents; the arts students use more cognitive strategies and social/affective strategiesthan the science students. For the moderate TOA students, the arts students use most of thereading strategies more frequently than the science students, especially the use ofcognitive strategies. For the low TOA students, the arts students use more readingstrategies than the science students, but the use of the social/affective strategies has no significant difference.