| Reading is an important and complex cognitive process which is fraught with uncertainty or ambiguity and these uncertainties or ambiguities may cause some psychological barriers and responses such as confusion or anxiety on learners.Therefore,success in foreign language reading necessitates a degree of tolerance of ambiguity(TOA).At the same time,in the process of reading,it is important for learners to choose effective reading strategies because appropriate reading strategies are a means of self-evaluation that contribute to effective reading and optimal reading.Although there have been a large and growing body of studies conducted to examine the relationship between TOA and the level of language achievement and learning strategies,few researchers drew on researches into exploring the relationship between the level of TOA and the use of English reading strategies,especially the differences in the use of English reading strategies among students with different levels of TOA.Besides,far too much attention has been paid to college students,instead of senior high school students who are at the basic stage of learning a foreign language.Moreover,reading strategies are largely implicit,and sometimes even the reader himself does not have a clear understanding of the reading strategies he uses.Think-aloud method,as the most direct and the best tool available to explore the on-going and decision-making processes,can be viewed as a more effective way to study reading strategies.This study is prompted to investigate the differences in the use of English reading strategies among senior high school students with different levels of TOA based on the TAPs.To this end,a combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches was used to answer the following questions: 1)What is the general level of senior high school students' TOA in learning English? 2)What reading strategies do senior high school students use and how are they used? 3)Is there any difference in the use of reading strategies between high TOA and low TOA learners? If yes,what is the difference?In the current study,90 second-year students were selected from Jinan No.1Senior High School to fill out questionnaires which elicited scores of TOA.According to the scores,the subjects were divided into two groups(high TOA group and low TOA group)and 12 students were randomly selected from each group.Of the 24 students,4 students took part in the pilot experiment and 20 students participated in the formal experiment.The author asked them to speak out their process when taking the reading comprehension test and record the process on a digital audio recorder.Then the author used ATLAS.ti7.0 qualitative analysis software to extract the strategies used by the subjects to form the TAPs.To figure out whether there were differences in reading strategies use between high TOA and low TOA readers,the author carried out an independent sample T-test with SPSS 20.Meanwhile,the author analyzed how the two groups used reading strategies and the reasons for the differences through the TAPs and the recordings of interviews.Based on data analysis,this study yields some major findings: Firstly,in this study,most of the senior high school students had a lower TOA level.Secondly,problem-solving strategies and support strategies were two kinds of strategies used by most readers.Among all the strategies used by the subjects,underlining or circling the information,translating English into Chinese,checking understanding,reading purposefully and adjusting reading speed were the most frequently used strategies.Thirdly,there were differences in the use of reading strategies between subjects with higher TOA level and those with lower TOA level.Furthermore,based on the TAPs and the retrospective interviews,two main reasons for the differences in using reading strategies between the two groups were analyzed.Taken together,the author put forward several pedagogical implications as well as some limitations. |
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