A Study On The Correlation Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Reading Comprehension Achievement Of Junior High School Students

Reading,which is regarded as an essential part of learning English,is the important way of obtaining information.Tolerance of ambiguity,which is regarded as a kind of learning style,plays a role of an influence reading ability in English reading.At present,there are few researches on the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity(TOA)and reading ability in the field of Second Language Acquisition,and the existing researches are mostly about college and senior high school students.The research aims to explore the correlation between junior high school students' tolerance of ambiguity and their English reading comprehension achievements and the differences between students' tolerance of ambiguity.The specific research questions are as follows:(1)How is the general tendency of junior high school students' TOA? Are there any differences in TOA between male and female students?(2)Is there a correlation between junior high school students' TOA and their reading comprehension level?(3)Are junior high school students' TOA level related to different reading comprehension questions and how?(4)Do students with different TOA levels have different scores in different questions of reading comprehension tests?The study was based on 106 students in Grade 9 in Jin Liulin Foreign Language School of Shijiazhuang City.A questionnaire,a English reading comprehension test and an interview are used to collect data.SPSS17.0 statistical software was used to analyze the data.The results are presented as follows:1.Junior high school students' TOA is at a lower-middle level.2.The correlation between Junior high school students of TOA and their reading comprehension scores is significant positive correlation.3.TOA and main idea questions and detailed questions are significant positive correlation,TOA and inferred questions are positive correlation but not significant.This means that in a certain range of difficulty of reading comprehension questions,the correlation between TOA and English reading comprehension is significant positive correlation.4.Three levels of TOA students have significant differences in reading comprehension scores.Students with high,moderate and low TOA have significant differences in detailed questions and main idea questions,but not significant difference in inferred questions.Meanwhile,no matter how difficult the question is,the students with moderate TOA get the highest score.5.There is a significant difference in TOA between male and female students.Female's TOA is higher than that of male students.6.Gender has an influence on reading comprehension scores.Females have higher reading comprehension scores than males.Survey results show that tolerance of ambiguity has a certain influence on English reading comprehension.Teachers should recognize the importance of TOA in reading comprehension,and understand students' TOA level and status.In teaching,teachers should consciously understand and develop the students' level of tolerance of ambiguity,guide students to actively adjust their tolerance of ambiguity in reading comprehension,so as to improve the students' English reading comprehension level.