A Study On The Correlation Between Senior High School Students' English Reading Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Their Reading Achievements

This study aims to explore the correlation between senior high school students' reading tolerance of ambiguity and their reading achievements.As one of the reading strategies,English reading tolerance of ambiguity has a certain correlation with senior high school students' reading achievements.Therefore,the present study is designed to present the correlation between senior high school students' reading tolerance of ambiguity and their reading achievements.Two questions are raised here:(1)What is the general situation of senior high school students' English reading tolerance of ambiguity?(2)What is the correlation between senior high school students' English reading tolerance of ambiguity and their reading achievements?To find out the answers,this study uses the quantitative approaches,including a series of survey and scale.Because the scale of reading tolerance of ambiguity was improved and developed from Ely's tolerance of ambiguity scale,a study was conducted to establish the reliability and validity of the present scale before the formal experiments.The data which was collected from the survey and the scale was processed with SPSS 21.0 for descriptive analysis,Pearson correlation test and multiple regression analysis were made up with the part of quantitative analysis.The findings show that:(1)most of the senior high school students read with moderate English reading tolerance of ambiguity,none with really high or really low level of English reading tolerance of ambiguity level.While in unfamiliar and contradictory situation,students have higher level of English reading tolerance of ambiguity.However in complicated situation,students are in moderate level of English reading tolerance of ambiguity.(2)the senior high school students' English reading tolerance of ambiguity and their English reading achievements have a significant positive correlation.Students' English reading tolerance of ambiguity has a significant predictive effect on the English achievement which indicates that the level of English reading tolerance of ambiguity determines learners' reading achievements to some extend.Contrary with complicated and contradictory situation,unfamiliar situationexerts greater effects on the reading achievements.After finding that the senior high school students' English reading tolerance of ambiguity and their reading achievements have a significant positive correlation,this study then applies think-aloud protocol to further explore the reason behind it and the different thinking processes when students with low and high reading tolerance of ambiguity encounter with the ambiguous situation.This study finds that while reading in ambiguous situation,students with low level of reading tolerance of ambiguity will feel anxious and have no idea of what to do.Therefore,they spent more time in finishing reading task.On the contrary,students with high level of reading tolerance of ambiguity tend to tolerate such a situation and apply flexibly different reading strategies to read,as a result,they can finish reading efficiently and accurately.It's hoped that teachers are expected to realize that the students' English reading tolerance of ambiguity plays an important part in students' reading achievements.Moreover,teachers are supposed to study the theory of English reading tolerance of ambiguity and train students' reading aptitude in accordance with their different reading tolerance of ambiguity.