An Investigative Research On Correlation Among Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Listening Comprehension Scores And Listening Strategy Of Senior High School Students

Listening,as an inseparable part of communicative competence,has been considered to be a vitally crucial component of language learning by a great number of specialists.TOA(tolerance of ambiguity)is defined as the ability of facing ambiguous and handling new information of language.Many linguists have studied the relationship between TOA and second/foreign language learning as well as the specific aspects of language learning.Based on the Krashen's Input Hypothesis and Individual Difference Theory,this thesis studies the relationship between the tolerance of ambiguity and listening in the aspect of second language learning.Meanwhile,the author intends to find the situation of TOA,the correlation between TOA and listening scores,the correlation between TOA and listening strategy.The research questions are as follows:1.What is the current situation about TOA level of participants in the high school? 2.Is there correlation between TOA and English listening comprehension scores of high school students? 3.Is there any correlation between TOA and listening strategy use of high school students?In order to answer the research questions,125 students of Grade Three of Yangcun in No.3high school of Tianjin are chosen as participants.Two questionnaires,a listening test paper,interview and SPSS are adopted as research instruments.Research findings are as following: Firstly,more than half of participants have moderate TOA level,low TOA level and high TOA level is taken up by small group.And there is a positive correlation between TOA and listening test achievements and there is significant difference among participants with different TOA levels in listening scores.Furthermore,TOA is positively correlated with use of listening strategy and different TOA level students have different performance in using listening strategy.Although cognitive strategies are commonly used by all the students,relatively speaking,the students with high TOA level are more inclined to use metacognitive and social and affective strategies.Those with moderate TOA level are more inclined to use cognitive strategies and metacognitive strategies rather than social and affective strategies.The low TOA level students are more inclined to use cognitive strategies than the others.Moreover,there is some limitations so further study should notice the problems and improve the experiment plan.And there is no doubt to increase the awareness of tolerance of ambiguity and use it in English teaching.