| Ambiguity tolerance,as one kind of learning style,has great effect on learners' foreign language acquisition.Reading,as an important component of target language learning,naturally has many ambiguities.Learners should know how to adopt appropriate strategies to solve different problems during the reading process.For Junior High School students,reading comprehension part accounts for a large proportion in English examination.As a kind of cognitive style,ambiguity tolerance can influence the use of reading strategies.Thus,this paper is undertaken to investigate the status quo of Junior High School students'ambiguity tolerance and reading strategies through questionnaires and interviews.The research mainly involves three questions:I)What is the general situation of Junior High School students'ambiguity tolerance?2)Are there any differences in reading strategies between high-tolerant learners and low-tolerant learners?If yes,what are the differences?3)What is the relationship between Junior High School students' ambiguity tolerance and their English reading strategies?Both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in this study.In the quantitative research,the first questionnaire(Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale)with the whole internal reliability reaching.878 is adopted and the second questionnaire(Survey of Reading Strategy)with the whole internal reliability reaching.918 is adopted.The questionnaires are handed out to 90 Junior two students from one Junior High School in Nanjing on December 6th,2017.Then the data is processed by SPSS 21.0.The qualitative research is a semi-structured interview.8 students are selected to participate in the interview.The interview is carried out in Chinese and the whole process is phone-recorded.Afterwards,the results are transcribed into English and the transcriptions of the interview are carefully analyzed.The following findings are discovered through the analysis of quantitative and qualitative research.Firstly,Junior High School students generally have a moderate degree of ambiguity tolerance.Students do have different levels of ambiguity tolerance when encountering different ambiguous situations for the score of each item is different.Within all the situations,the item 5"I don't like the feeling that my English pronunciation is not quite correct"(Mean=2.38),is perceived as the least ambiguous situation that students can tolerate.The item 12 "One thing I don't like about reading in English is having to guess what the meaning is"(Mean=3.02),is regarded as the most ambiguous situation that students can tolerate.Secondly,there do exist some differences between high-tolerant learners and low-tolerant learners in the use of reading strategies.Generally speaking,high-tolerant learners adopt all the strategies more frequently than low-tolerant learners.Within the three broad categories of reading strategies,high-tolerant learners and low-tolerant learners show the difference in the Problem Solving Strategies and Support Strategies.In terms of Problem Solving Strategies,the two groups show significant differences in the two specific strategies(I try to get back on track when I lose concentration and When text becomes difficult,I pay closer attention to what I am reading),with high-tolerant learners getting a much higher mean score than low-tolerant learners(p=.000).In the category of Support Strategies,the two groups show differences in the five specific strategies(When text becomes difficult,I read aloud to help me understand what 1 read,I use reference materials(e.g.a dictionary)to help me understand what I read,I paraphrase(restate ideas in my own words)to better understand what I read,I go back and forth in the text to find relationships among ideas in it and When reading,I think about information in both English and my mother tongue).In contrast,the two groups do not show much difference in using Global Strategies(p=.128>.05).However,the two groups show the difference in the specific strategy(I have a purpose in mind when I read)although the two groups do not show difference in Global Strategies on the whole.Thirdly,there exist some correlation between Junior High School students' ambiguity tolerance and their English reading strategies.Overall reading strategies and two subcategories of reading strategies(Problem Solving Strategies and Support Strategies)are positively correlated with ambiguity tolerance at.01 level.There is no correlation found between Global Strategies and ambiguity tolerance.As for Problem Solving Strategies,most of the micro specific strategies are positively related to ambiguity tolerance except the strategy of I read slowly and carefully to make sure I understand what I read,I adjust my reading speed according to what I am reading and When text becomes difficult,I re-read it to increase my understanding.As for Support Strategies,most of the micro specific strategies are positively related to ambiguity tolerance except the strategy of I take notes while reading to help me understand what I read,I underlie or circle information in the text to help me remember it and When reading,I translate from English into my native language.In light of these findings,this paper makes some pedagogical implications both for teachers and students.For teachers,they should take some measures to cultivate students' awareness of ambiguity tolerance and reading strategies and guide students to use some specific reading strategies that are highly and positively correlated to ambiguity tolerance.Moreover,they should encourage low-tolerant learners to practice more reading strategies.For students,they must improve the awareness of reading strategy use and learn to select the proper reading strategies. |
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