A Correlative Study On The Tolerance Of Ambiguity And EnglishReading Strategies Of Senior High School Students

The reading strategy is a method of processing information that the learner subconsciously uses according to the reading task when reading.Research shows that reading strategies affect students' reading efficiency and reading ability.The learners who can use reading strategies flexibly tend to have higher reading efficiency and ability.Tolerance of ambiguity,which is an important factor affecting one's employment of reading strategies,refers to learners' attitudes towards ambiguous and unfamiliar materials.Tolerance of ambiguity was first put forward in the field of psychology,and then was introduced into the field of second language acquisition and received extensive attention.Although there are some researches on tolerance of ambiguity in the field of second language acquisition,most of them focus on the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and learning strategies,while few on tolerance of ambiguity and English reading strategies.In addition,the research subjects are mainly on students of English majors and non-English majors in colleges and less on high school students.This study proposes three questions:(1)What is the general state of high school students' tolerance of ambiguity when reading articles from English textbook?(2)What reading strategies do learners employ when reading articles from English textbook?(3)What is the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and English reading strategies of high school students? Therefore,this study aims to explore the general state of high school students' tolerance of ambiguity and their employment of English reading strategies.Then,the author further analyzes the correlation between them,and proposes effective suggestions.The subjects of this study are 88 Senior One students from two parallel classes from a Senior High School.Firstly,the author uses Ely's Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale(SLTAS)to evaluate student's comprehensive tolerance of ambiguity in second language learning.This scale is a four-point Likert scale with 12 questions,including students' listening,speaking,reading,writing,pronunciation,grammar and vocabulary in second language learning.Negative statements are used in the items in the scale,so the higher the score is,the less tolerance of ambiguity thelearner has.Then,the adapted questionnaire from Oxford's Strategy Inventory for Language Learning(SILL)is used to measure students' strategic choices of reading strategies when reading English materials.This questionnaire contains 30 self-report items in reading,including six categories: memory strategy,cognitive strategy,compensation strategy,metacognitive strategy,affective strategy and social strategy.In order to measure students' tolerance of ambiguity and their use of English reading strategies,as well as to improve the effectiveness of the study,three students with high tolerance of ambiguity and three students with low tolerance of ambiguity are selected for interview.There are five questions in the interview.The first two are about students' tolerance of ambiguity,and the rest of three are about students' use of English reading strategies.After the investigation,the author employs SPSS22.0 to analyze the data and study the correlation between them.Finally,the author draws the conclusions.Senior high school students' comprehensive tolerance of ambiguity is on the medium level or slightly lower.In the process of reading,students will be anxious when they come across ambiguous situations.But students with high tolerance of ambiguity will have less anxiety than students with low tolerance of ambiguity.These six reading strategies' average value from high to low are compensation strategy,memory strategy,affective strategy,metacognitive strategy,cognitive strategy and social strategy.Students with high tolerance of ambiguity use strategies much more frequently than students with low tolerance of ambiguity.It shows that students with high tolerance of ambiguity are more frequently and flexibly in choosing and using reading strategies.There is a correlation between students' tolerance of ambiguity and reading strategies.Students with high tolerance of ambiguity can selectively use reading strategies to read different kinds of materials and handle different reading tasks.They are not easier to lose enthusiasm and self-confidence when confronted with ambiguous situations.However,students with low tolerance of ambiguity are not able to choose strategies according to their objectives and use reading strategies randomly.When come across ambiguous situations,their reading enthusiasm will decrease,and even give up reading.Based on the findings,the author puts forward the following suggestions.Firstly,to cultivate students' and teachers' awareness of tolerance of ambiguity.Professional lectures should be carried out to arouse teachers' awareness of tolerance of ambiguity.Students should understand their tolerance of ambiguity under the guidance of teachers.Then,students' tolerance of ambiguity should be improved in specific reading tasks.Teachers should make good use of English textbook reading articles to improve students' employment of English reading strategies.For example,guessing the main idea of the article can train students' employment of compensation strategies;drawing mind maps can train students' employment of memory strategies;group discussions can improve students' employment of social strategies.