A Survey Study On Tolerance Of Ambiguity In English Listening By Senior High School Students

This study was undertaken to investigate senior high school students' tolerance of ambiguity(TOA)in English listening.The theoretical bases of the study are Affective Filter Hypothesis and Ego Boundary Theory.The significance of the study lies in two aspects:it enriches the studies on TOA,especially in listening;it provides some suggestions in teaching and learning with the expectation of raising students' TOA level in listening properly so as to improve English listening proficiency.The research questions addressed in this study are as follows:1)What's the general state of TOA in English listening by senior high school students?2)Are there any differences in English listening TOA between male and female students?If yes,what are the differences?3)Are there any differences in English listening TOA between high and low achievers?If yes,what are the differences?Participants were 223 Senior Two students from Shuyang High School in Jiangsu province.Instruments were a questionnaire and an interview.The questionnaire was adapted from Ely's(1995)Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale(SLTAS)with the whole internal reliability reaching.866.The questionnaires were handed out on November 23rd,2016 and at last 187 questionnaires were considered valid.Afterwards,an interview was conducted with 12 students whose questionnaires were valid.The data was processed by SPSS 21.0 with descriptive statistics analysis and independent-samples t test analysis.This study yields the following major findings.Firstly,the general state of senior high school students' TOA in English listening is at a relatively low level(M=2.79).The TOA levels are also relatively low in aspects of pronunciation(M=2.88),vocabulary(M=2.82),sentence(M=2.62)and discourse(M=2.80).With respect to pronunciation,students are more intolerant of homonyms(M=2.34)and similar pronunciation(M=2.39).As for vocabulary,students are more intolerant of unknown key words(M=2.24)and words with multiple meanings(M=2.36).As for sentence,students are more intolerant of complicated sentence structure(M=2.27).With regard to discourse,students are more intolerant of unfamiliar background knowledge(M=2.36).Secondly,there is a significant difference in English listening TOA between male and female students in general(p=.032<.05)with females being more tolerant.There are significant gender differences in aspects of pronunciation(p=.039<.05)and discourse(p=.005<.05)while there are no significant gender differences in aspects of vocabulary(p=.470>.05)and sentence(p=.652<.05).With respect to pronunciation,females are more tolerant of similar pronunciation(p=.004<.05)and the change of pronunciation(p=.012<.05).With regard to discourse,females are more tolerant of unfamiliar background knowledge(p=.009<.05).Thirdly,there is a significant difference in English listening TOA between high and low achievers in general(p=.000<.05)with high achievers being more tolerant.There are significant proficiency differences in aspects of pronunciation(p=.001<.05),vocabulary(p=.002<.05),sentence(p=.000<.05)and discourse(p=.000<.05).With respect to pronunciation,high achievers are more tolerant of homonyms(p=.006<.05),similar pronunciation(p=.006<.05)and the change of pronunciation(p=.002<.05).As for vocabulary,high achievers are more tolerant of words with multiple meanings(p=.005<.05)and unknown key words(p=.007<.05).As for sentence,high achievers are more tolerant of complicated sentence structure(p=.000<.05)and long sentence(p=.004<.05).With regard to discourse,high achievers are more tolerant of disordered text structure(p=.000<.05)and unfamiliar background knowledge(p=.009<.05).This study provides some implications.Firstly,both teachers and students should realize the importance of TOA in English listening and try to improve the level properly.Secondly,teachers should take gender differences and proficiency differences in English listening TOA into full consideration and make different teaching arrangements accordingly.For those who have higher level of TOA,teachers should instruct them to pay more attention to details and accuracy;for those who have lower level of TOA,teachers should encourage them to overcome uncomfortable feelings caused by ambiguous situations and instruct them to focus more on main idea.There are also limitations in the study.The sample size is not large enough to be generalized to the whole population.Besides,only the aspects of pronunciation,vocabulary,sentence and discourse are included,which may not be comprehensive enough to reflect the whole picture of senior high school students' TOA in English listening.