Study Of Correlation Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity And English Reading Ability Of Junior High School Students

As one of the most important concepts in human cognitive field,tolerance of ambiguity(TOA)was first presented by Frenkel-Brunswik,which has attracted lots of attention of second language researchers later.Generally,it is found that the level of TOA plays a vital role in English reading.As one of the essential elements in English learning,reading is a process full of ambiguity.If English learners don't have enough consciousness of TOA,they will find it hard to tolerate vague expressions in reading process,which will weaken their reading effect directly.English reading is significant to junior school students.Therefore,in order to improve reading ability,it is important to make a study the current TOA situation of junior school students and the relationship between TOA and English reading ability.This study adopts the method of questionnaires and interviews.Two questionnaires are adapted from Ely's Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale(SLTAS)and Oxford's strategy inventory for language learning(SILL).A reading comprehension test is also adopted here.118 junior grade three students of No.2 Middle School Attached to SDNU were taken as subjects.TOA consciousness and use of reading strategies can be clearly seen from the interviews for students and teachers.Based on the study and analysis above,the following conclusions can be obtained.Firstly,most of the junior school students have moderate TOA level.Secondly,they sometimes employ reading strategies(RS)during English reading process.Among the six parts of RS,compensation strategy is the most frequently employed,followed by metacognitive strategy,social strategy,cognitive strategy,memory strategy,and emotional strategy is the least used.Thirdly,it was found that TOA and reading scores have significant positive correlation.The higher the TOA level they have,the better grades they could get.According to analysis of the collected data,the thesis offers the following advice for English reading teaching.It is important and urgent to cultivate teachers' and students' TOA consciousness.Secondly,teachers should attempt to adopt various teaching methods,create pleasant learning atmosphere,to cultivate students' moderate TOA level in daily reading teaching.Additionally,in daily English class,teachers should also pay more attention to the cultivation of students' RS awareness.Lastly,based on the constructivism theory,teachers should set reasonable teaching goals tohelp build up learners' reading interests.