A Study On Tolerance Of Ambiguity In English Learning Of High School Students In Urumqi

According to Oxford (1990), tolerance of ambiguity is one of the importantelements influencing foreign language learning. However, review of the literatureshows that most of previous researches have examined tolerance of ambiguity inlanguage learning by students from universities or colleges, and little research hasbeen done to investigate tolerance of ambiguity in language learning by high schoolstudents. Based on the above reasons, the present research aimed to investigate thetolerance of ambiguity of high school students. The following questions are designed:(1) What degree do high school students of Urumqi tolerate ambiguity have in theprocess of their English learning?(2) Are there any differences in tolerance ofambiguity between males and females of high school students? If there aredifferences, what are they?(3)Are there any differences in TOA between students ofhigh achievement and those of low achievement? If there are differences, what arethey?In order to answer the above questions, a questionnaire survey was conductedamong249high school students in No.54high school of Urumqi. Descriptivestatistics, Independent Sample T-test and an analysis on variance (ANOVA) areemployed in the study.The study produced a number of findings regarding the students’ TOA in theirEnglish learning. Firstly, the subjects’ tolerance of Ambiguity was a little low the midpoint level in their English learning. In terms of the learning of different languageskills, this study revealed that the subjects were most intolerant of ambiguity inlearning pronunciation, and they showed the high tolerant in guessing wordsmeaning. Secondly, there are statistically significant differences by genders in TOA.The study revealed that significant differences in reading, writing, vocabulary andguessing words meaning. Thirdly, high proficiency students differ significantly fromlow proficiency students in overall ambiguity tolerance with the former being higher.High achievement students are significantly more tolerant of ambiguity than lowachievement students in listening, speaking, reading, translating and writing.At last, the results of the present study are discussed and analyzed. Relatedpedagogical implications are proposed to facilitate teaching. It can be beneficial forhigh school language teachers to choose different teaching methods according toindividuals, gender and English proficiency.