A Study On Tolerance Of Ambiguity In Foreign Language Learning Among Senior High School Students

With the deepening of curriculum reform,the development of second language acquisition research and the birth of cognitive psychology and humanistic psychology,people pay more and more attention to the important role of individual factors of learners in foreign language learning.Among individual factors,tolerance of ambiguity(TOA)as a cognitive style plays an important role in foreign language learning.Learners' degree of TOA affects their amount of language input in foreign language learning,while the amount of language input directly affects learners' perception of language and restricts the improvement of language.In view of this,this thesis attempts to investigate the TOA of senior high school students in the process of foreign language learning,hoping to provide some implications and suggestions for teachers and students.Based on the investigation of relevant literature,this paper employs the Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale designed by Ely to investigate 300 students in two senior high schools in Qidong,Hunan Province.This study mainly addresses the following questions:(1)what is the overall situation of TOA among senior high school students in foreign language learning in these two investigated schools?(2)Are there any differences in the degree of TOA in foreign language learning between science students and art students? If the answer is yes,then what are the differences?(3)Are there any differences in the degree of TOA in foreign language learning between students with high English proficiency and those with low English proficiency? If so,what are the differences?(4)What are the factors that affect senior high school students' degree of TOA in the process of foreign language learning?The collected data are analyzed by SPSS 20.0.The results show that:(1)the degree of TOA in foreign language learning among senior high school students in these two investigated schools is at a medium level,the degree of TOA in input is higher than that in output,reading TOA and writing TOA are the highest in input TOA and output TOA respectively.(2)The degree of TOA of science students is higher than that of arts students and there is a significant difference in TOA between arts students and science students,especially in listening,writing and grammar.(3)Students with high English proficiency have a higher degree of TOA than those with lower English proficiency,and the degree of TOA between high English proficiency students and low English proficiency students is significantly different,especially in listening,reading and vocabulary.(4)There are four factors that affect senior high school students' degree of TOA in foreign language learning.They are the differences in cognitive style,learning strategy,cultural background and self awareness.Based on the above analysis results,the author provides some suggestions for foreign language teaching in senior high school,hoping can help the teaching of teachers and the learning of students.The pedagogical implications are listed in two aspects: teachers and students.However,research sample of this thesis is too small and the assessment of students' English proficiency is not authoritative and scientific,there are still some limitations in this thesis.The author hopes that the future research can be further improved.