A Correlation Study Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Listening Comprehension In The Senior High School

In recent years,the research focus of second language acquisition has changed from the exploration of effective methods to the improvement of teaching through investigating learners' individual difference in learning process.Tolerance of ambiguity as an important individual difference has great influence on language learning.Ambiguous situations exist in listening,speaking,reading and writing comprehensively.Linguists at home and abroad have made a great amount of studies on the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and second language acquisition,but few of them have concentrated on the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and listening comprehension,especially in terms of senior high school students.This study aims to explore the relationship between senor high school students' tolerance of ambiguity and listening comprehension.This thesis attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What is the general situation of senior high school EFL learners' tolerance of ambiguity?(2)What is the correlation between senior high school EFL learners' tolerance of ambiguity and their listening comprehension?(3)Is there any difference between male tolerance of ambiguity and female tolerance of ambiguity?If any,what is difference between them?The subjects involved in the present research are 97 subjects who are studying in Baotou Sixth Senior High School.And all of these subjects are in Grade 2.The current research adopts quantitative and qualitative approaches,Ely's Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale,listening scores of three exams,and interview.The collected data were analyzed by SPSS 17.0.The research findings are listed below:Firstly,in general,most students show a slightly low tolerance of ambiguity.A great number of subjects hold moderate tolerance of ambiguity,which occupies 78.34%of the total.The students with high and low tolerance of ambiguity take up 20.58%and 1.08%respectively.Students' tolerance of ambiguity in reading and writing is higher than that in listening and speaking.Secondly,the analysis indicates students' listening ability is poor.The mean score of listening comprehension is 20.4822,and almost half of the students do not reach the average level.Thirdly,it is clear that the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and listening comprehension is positively significant according to the results of independent-samples T test and interview.In other words,the higher tolerance of ambiguity students hold,the better they perform in listening comprehension.Fourthly,a significant difference has been found between male tolerance of ambiguity and female tolerance of ambiguity.Female tolerance of ambiguity is a little lower than male tolerance of ambiguity.The present research provides some empirical findings and enriches the researches focus on tolerance of ambiguity in second language acquisition.Based on the above conclusions,pedagogical suggestions are given to both teachers and students.First of all,tolerance of ambiguity should be paid attention to in teaching and learning process.Second,teachers should apply different approaches to different students to improve their tolerance of ambiguity because of their different level of tolerance of ambiguity.It is remarkable that there is difference between male tolerance of ambiguity and female tolerance of ambiguity,which requires teachers to take it into consideration.Third,listening plays an essential role in language learning.Both teachers and students should put stress on it.More training concentrate on listening ability should be conducted in learning.