A Correlative Study On Tolerance Of Ambiguity And English Reading Achievement In High Schools

Tolerance of ambiguity is regarded as the degree to which a learner is comfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.However,tolerance of ambiguity is easily neglected by many English learners when they are constantly confused by those ambiguous and uncertain expressions in reading.As a natural attribute of language,ambiguity means that individuals can't fully understand the content for lack of enough information.If individuals fail to tolerate the ambiguous expressions,they will find it difficult to read effectively.The concept of TOA(tolerance of ambiguity)was first put forward in the field of psychology and the study of TOA did not receive wide attention until it was introduced to the field of second language acquisition.Until now,a number of scholars have explored the relationship between TOA and second language learning.However,current research concerning TOA and English reading is mainly about college students,and only a little focuses on the students from high schools.Therefore,the present dissertation which aims to investigate the correlation between TOA and high schools students' English reading will be of great significance to further teaching.The study selects 95 students from Putian No.7 High School as subjects and adopts Ely's second language tolerance of ambiguity scale to collect the data of TOA.The data of English reading is collected from the scores of students' English final examination.With the help of SPSS 16.0 software,the study seeks to explore the current situation of the subjects' TOA from this school,the relationship between TOA and their English reading achievements,and the correlation between the subjects' TOA and two kinds of reading comprehension questions.The study concludes as follows:1)According to the data of questionnaire,most of the subjects from this school are low in TOA which account for about 69.4%,while 30.6% of them perform better than others.2)Generally speaking,there is a positive correlation between the subjects' TOA and English reading achievement.3)The correlation between the subjects' TOA and scores of inferential questions is more significant than that of questions for details.To some degree,it is proved that there is a significant correlation between the subjects' TOA and reading comprehension questions.According to the present study,the author concludes that teachers should instruct students to ignore the uncertainty and ambiguity.Besides,both teachers and students should improve their TOA and apply it to English reading.If teachers can take some steps to cultivate students' TOA,their English reading abilities will be enhanced as well.Therefore,the present study not only has certain theoretical value,but also has practical significance for the teaching of English reading.