Action Research On Improving Ambiguity Tolerance In Junior High School Students' English Listening Comprehension

Since the 1980 s,ambiguity tolerance as one of the individual differences of learners has become a hot object of research.English listening is the basic skill but the author found that listening was very difficult for ND Junior High School students.They had a bad performance in doing it.After reading some theses of some famous researchers and interviewing some students,the author learned that many reasons caused students' poor English listening performance but the most likely reason was students' low degree of ambiguity tolerance.Through investigation and interview,the author confirmed the hypothesis.So,she tried to carry out the corresponding action research on improving junior high school students' ambiguity tolerance in English listening.The author chose the internship class which contains 36 students as the research object to carry out the action research.She monitored and evaluated her English listening classes through questionnaires,interviews,teacher' reflection journals,students' reflective records and other methods,aiming at providing reference and inspiration for the teaching of English listening for rural schools.The action research was conducted in three cycles.The results of the first cycle showed that good learning habits,authentic language materials and diverse listening tasks were helpful for improving students' ambiguity tolerance.The results of the second cycle showed that the activities aimed at language perception and listening strategies training helped students improve their ambiguity tolerance;the third cycle of research showed that the increase of ambiguity tolerance in listening was related to daily training and English listening activities should be more communicative.After doing the action research,the quantitative and qualitative data showed:1)Higher degree of Ambiguity Tolerance can help students reduce their anxiety and increase their interest.2)Higher degree of Ambiguity Tolerance can promote students' usage of English listening strategy.3)Higher degree of Ambiguity Tolerance can help students improve their English listening ability.The results of this study provided empirical support for the correlation between ambiguity tolerance and listening performance of junior high school students.This action research also provided an example for English teachers to improve the effectiveness of English listening teaching.Many ways such as developing good learning habits,selecting materials,training English listening strategies were used to improve students' ambiguity tolerance.At the same time,this study also made a useful exploration for further research in this field.