A Correlation Study On Tolerance Of Ambiguity In English Reading And English Reading Strategy Utilization In Non-English Majors

The tolerance of ambiguity was firstly defined as a psychological term by Frenkel Brunswick in1949.Then it was introduced into the linguistic field in 1990 by some outstanding scholars.The research represented by Oxford indicates that the tolerance of ambiguity as a major factor which greatly influence the strategies utilization.The related theories and studies have been matured abroad,but those researches at home are just in their own time.The study about the correlations between the tolerance of ambiguity and reading strategies utilization is limit.The previous studies based on the theories of tolerance of ambiguity and reading strategies,with reference to previous researches and studies both at home and abroad.This research tries to figure out the correlations between the tolerance of ambiguity and reading strategies utilization of the first-year students in Xi'an Polytechnic University.The researcher has collected 193 non-English major students as her research subjects.This study adopts questionnaires of Ely's Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale and reading strategies utilization are adopted as the major measurements.The face to face interviews to 8 students of different levels of tolerance of ambiguity are also carried out to fulfill this study.The author collects the related data and does systemic and scientific analyses under the help of SPSS.The research mainly involves the descriptive analyses,independent sample T tests and Pearson Correction analyses.The study findings are listed as follows:(1)87% students are with low tolerance of ambiguity.(2)Most of those students are at the medium level of using reading strategies,among which,cognitive strategies are the most welcomed reading skills,followed by the meta-cognitive strategies and the social/affecting strategies.(3)For the differences between high tolerance of ambiguity and the low group in strategies utilization,there is a significant difference between the low and the high tolerance group in overall reading strategies utilization.(4)The main hypothesis has been proved that there is a high correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and overall reading strategies utilization.The author tries to analyze the importance of the tolerance of ambiguity and reading strategies utilization.Some flexible implications will be given to the students and teachers for their future teaching and learning.In the last chapter,the limitations of this research are also described for the future development in this area.