Effects Of Sex And Tolerance Of Ambiguity On EFL Reading Strategies

Reading strategy is an important aspect of English reading.But many junior middle school students' reading abilities are far below where they should be,and the differences between students are great.This has drawn close attention of many linguists and researchers.And lots of previous research shows that learners' English learning strategies are related to their English learning achievements,and differences in sex and tolerance of ambiguity(TOA)are also important factors that might affect English learning.In addition, TOA may affect learners' use of learning strategies.Based on previous studies,therefore, this research investigated the effect of sex and TOA upon the junior middle school students' use of English reading strategies.40 junior middle school students in their third year,at Zhulin Middle School, Shenzhen,participated in the survey.Ely's Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale,Wu's learning strategies and Wen's learning strategies questionnaires were adapted and used.The data of the subjects' sex,tolerance of ambiguity,and their English reading strategies were thus collected.And the data were given a 2×2 analysis of variance,with sex(Male vs.Female)and TOA(High vs.Low)as the 2 factors(or independent variables) and the subjects' use of English reading strategies as the dependent variable.It was found that neither sex nor TOA significantly affected the use of strategies in general,and the two factors did not interact significantly in their effects.And when the reading strategies were analyzed separately in terms of the three component parts,the subjects' sex or TOA did not significantly affect their use of self-management strategies or text comprehension strategies,and the two factors did not have significant interaction, either.For the strategy component of lexical processing,neither of the two factors had significant effect,but they had an extremely significant effect of interaction.In particular, for subjects with high TOA,females did significantly better than males in their use of lexical processing strategies;and for females,those with high TOA did significantly better than those with low TOA.The results show that sex and tolerance of ambiguity at least may affect the use of the examined junior middle school students' use of lexical processing strategies in English reading.They suggest that the teacher should attach due importance to the role of sex difference and guide male students and female students a bit differently in their use of reading strategies.In addition,students should be trained in tolerance of ambiguity so as to help them adopt the appropriate strategies in reading.