A Study On The Correlation Between Fuzzy Tolerance And Reading Anxiety In Freshmen

In English language learning process, individual differences have caused by both affective and cognitive factors. Foreign language reading anxiety, as one of the affective factors and tolerance of ambiguity, as one of the cognitive factors are often explored as two important factors affecting English language learning performance. A lot of researchers who have made numerous research on anxiety and tolerance of ambiguity respectively from different perspectives in the past. So this thesis intends to probe into the correlation between non-English majors foreign language reading anxiety (FLRA) and their tolerance of ambiguity (TOA) in reading, and their impact on English reading performance. That will attract English teachers’ attention on influence of two factors including ambiguity tolerance and reading anxieties on freshmen’s foreign language reading, and the teachers will take ambiguity tolerance as one kind of foreign language reading skill and integrate it in teaching, relieve students’ mental stress properly, and eliminate anxieties brought by ambiguity tolerance during reading process, thus will make it possible for freshmen to be able to judge ambiguous scenes more correctly during reading process, try hard to guess, keep positive emotion and concentrate on organizing and coordinating cognitive activities, so as to achieve correct understanding of reading materials and improving reading performance.This study randomly chose 300 freshmen of non-English majors from Tianjin Polytechnic University as the subjects, and adopted Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale developed by Saito, Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale developed by Ely to collect the data, aims to discuss the following three research questions:1) what is the current situation of non-English major freshen’ level of English reading anxiety and tolerance of ambiguity in their English reading? 2) Is there a correlation between freshmen’ English reading anxiety and their tolerance of ambiguity in English reading? 3) what are the differences of foreign language reading anxiety, tolerance of ambiguity between arts and science students of non-English major freshmen? Finally, SPSS 17.0 is employed to classify and analyze the results obtained from the questionnaires. Based on the results and analysis of the data, the following conclusions are found:1) non-English majors generally have a medium level of FLRA and TOA in reading, their reading anxiety mainly come from five dimensions:the deficient English cultural knowledge, lack of interests and confidence, poorer reading ability and the difficulty of the reading material. The medium degree of TOA mainly result from their insufficient input and failure of cognitive construction.2) a significant and positive correlation between FLRA and TOA in reading, low level of in tolerance of ambiguity led to low reading anxiety, (note that the scoring was reversed, thus the higher score indicated a lower degree of the Participants,TOA) the higher the FLRA, the lower the TOA and vice versa.3) the difference of FLRA between laws and science students of non-English majors is not significant. It mainly because knowledge is not divided into science subject or art subject.Based on the findings, this research put forward the following pedagogical implications for the teaching of English reading comprehension. On one hand, teachers should pay much attention to the level of students’foreign language reading anxiety and tolerance of ambiguity, help students to minimize the negative effect of FLRA and enhance the positive function of TOA in fulfilling English reading comprehension to achieve the effective teaching and learning. On the other hand, English teachers should select reading materials which not only equal to students’ English levels and arouse their learning interest, but also expand the students’cultural background knowledge and guide them to facilitate their English reading comprehension abilities to enhance their reading confidence.