Correlation Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Writing Proficiency Of English Majors With Different Perceptual Learning Styles

Writing has always been a difficult part for English learners.In recent years,with the improvement of the level of foreign languages teaching,though students' general English performance was improved,their writing performance was still in a stagnated and fluctuated state.At present,with the development of applied linguistics,the focus of second language acquisition research was gradually shifted to the learners' individual differences.And it was generally acknowledged that individual differences within learners themselves influence the effectiveness of different teaching and learning methods.As the two important facets of individual factors,Perceptual Learning Style and Tolerance of Ambiguity became more popular in the field of SLA.The latest decades witnessed the attention to the study of tolerance of ambiguity or perceptual learning style combined with specific aspects of language such as listening,reading,and speaking.But the previous studies related to the two factors(tolerance of ambiguity and perceptual learning style)and English writing were insufficient.There were many researches on the correlation between perceptual learning styles and English achievement,but the studies focused on one specific part of language skill,especially English writing were comparatively few.This research employed quantitative method,aimed to explore the correlation between the tolerance of ambiguity and English writing proficiency of English majors with different perceptual learning styles.Three research questions are explored in this study:(1)What are the perceptual learning style distributions of the English majors?(2)What are the degrees of TOA of the English majors?(3)What is the correlation between TOA and English writing proficiency of English majors with different perceptual learning styles?The research subjects are 192 sophomores of English majors from Tianjin University of Science&Technology.Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire(PLSPQ)and the Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale(SLTAS)were used in this research to investigate the subjects' perceptual learning style and tolerance of ambiguity.SPSS 20.0 were used to analyze the data collected.Research results indicate that(1)Kinesthetic learning style is the most popular learning style among the four kinds of learning style preferences.The English majors show their greater preference to kinesthetic learning;auditory learning style is the least popular learning style;(2)The majority of the subjects have medium tolerance of ambiguity while only a small part of the students are with high or low tolerance of ambiguity;(3)There is no significant correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and writing achievements,but students with mediate level of tolerance of ambiguity tend to have higher writing scores than those with high or low tolerance of ambiguity.There is also no significant correlation between perceptual learning style and writing achievements.Visual style learners get the highest writing scores while kinesthetic style learners get the lowest.Learners of kinesthetic or visual learning style with medium level ambiguity tolerance get the highest writing scores;while the condition is the opposite for learners with auditory learning style.The group with middle level ambiguity tolerance gets the lowest scores;but for learners with tactile learning style,the result is totally different:the higher their level of tolerance of ambiguity,the higher scores of English writing they get.The research also provides some pedagogical implications.In the process of English teaching the teachers will be aware of the importance of fostering a moderate level of tolerance of ambiguity and employing teaching styles to fit the variety of learning styles of the students.