An Empirical Study On Relationships Among Tolerance Of Ambiguity, Writing Strategy And Writing Performance Of English Majors

In second language study, writing has occupied an important position, not only because writing is the symbol of the output of students’ language ability, but also the overall English standard competence of students. However, the actual situation is that students generally holds that writing is the most difficult part of English study. Students who regarded English as second language undoubtedly encounter different uncertain and ambiguity situation because of the culture and communication differences between China and western countries. The previous study showed that students in different levels of ambiguity performed differently in writing performance. Meanwhile, in actual writing process, students use different kinds writing strategy, which lead to different writing performance. Therefore there could be some relationship among tolerance of ambiguity(TOA), writing strategy and writing performance. But occupying in reading the studies the author found that most of the literature was about relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and writing performance, relationship between ambiguity and writing strategy,relationship between writing strategy and writing performance. The relationships among tolerance of ambiguity, writing strategy and writing performance was seldom to be found.The subjects of the studies are 52 English majors students of grade 2 in North University of China.By using the two questionnaires and the test, This study aims to conduct the relationships among tolerance of ambiguity, writing strategy and writing performance with two questionnaires based forms. The specific research questions include:(1) What is the current situation of tolerance of ambiguity,writing strategy and writing performance?(2)Are there any correlations between tolerance of ambiguity and writing performance? Do students in different levels of tolerance of ambiguity show any differences in writing performance?(3)Are there any correlations between tolerance of ambiguity and writing strategy? Do students in different levels of tolerance of ambiguity show differences in writing performance?(4)Are there any correlations between writing strategy and writing performance?The results indicated that: tolerance of ambiguity had no correlations with writing performance, while tolerance of ambiguity had a positive correlation with meta-congitive strategy. That is the more tolerance of ambiguity the student had, the more meta-cognitive strategy the students had. Compensation strategy had a positive correlation with writing performance, that is the more compensation strategy the students use, thebetter performance the students performed. Besides, students who were in moderate tolerance of ambiguity performed best in writing performance, using compensation most, while students who were in low tolerance of ambiguity used social and affective strategy, students who were in high tolerance of ambiguity used cognitive strategy and meta-cognitive strategy most.