Correlation Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity And EFL Reading Abilities

Tolerance of Ambiguity(TOA)was first presented by Frenkel-Brunswik in 1948,which is one of the most important concepts in research about human cognition.It has attracted lots of attention of second language researchers since then.Reading is one of the essential elements of English learning in senior high school.It is also a process full of ambiguity.If English learners do not have enough consciousness of TOA,they will find it hard to tolerate vague expressions in reading process,such as new words,grammar,unfamiliar context,complex sentences,etc.It will weaken their English reading directly,especially in comprehension of the main idea and macro-level understanding.Meanwhile,as an important part of English learning,reading plays a more and more important role in college entrance examination.Therefore,this study explored the relationship between TOA level and EFL reading abilities.The subjects of the research were mainly 117 students from two senior-high-school classes in Grade Three in Sichuan Guang'an Friendship Middle School.It adopted the methods of questionnaire survey,reading comprehension test,and interview.First of all,a questionnaire was translated from Ely's Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale(SLTAS).Then,a mid-term reading comprehension test was adopted.The study examined the correlation between the tolerance of ambiguity and the specific reading abilities of the subjects.In addition,the students' and the teachers' consciousness of tolerance of ambiguity was also analyzed through the interviews.The results show that most senior high school students' tolerance of ambiguity was at the middle level.The reading test scores of students with medium-level or low-level tolerance of ambiguity were much lower than those of students with high-level tolerance of ambiguity.Tolerance of ambiguity correlated positively with reading comprehension ability.There was a significant negative correlation between the subjects' tolerance of ambiguity and their ability to understand details in English reading.In contrast,there was a significant positive correlation between their tolerance of ambiguity and ability to understand main ideas.The results have important implications for English reading teaching.Accordingly,teachers should pay attention,in daily reading teaching,to helping students adjust their tolerance of ambiguity.For the students with high tolerance of ambiguity,teachers should pay attention to cultivating their ability to grasp the details of reading texts,in analyses and criticism.For the students with low tolerance of ambiguity,teachers need to develop their ability of overall analysis and generalization.In reading teaching practice,teachers should adopt flexible and diverse teaching methods to cultivate students' tolerance of ambiguity and create a relaxing and pleasant learning atmosphere.