A Study On The Correlation Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity And English Listening Strategies Employment Among Junior High School Students

At the end of the 20 th century,tolerance of ambiguity,as a kind of individual difference,was introduced in the field of foreign language learning for the first time.Indubitably,foreign language learning process is filled with ambiguities and uncertainties for most language learners,and it is inevitable to come across a variety of vague and uncertain situations during the process.Ely(1986)believes that whether appropriate learning strategies can be adopted to deal with those ambiguous situations in the learning process is an essential factor that affects language learning efficiency.Several scholars have been committed to conducting a series of studies on the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and language learning strategy,but there are not so many relevant domestic studies.The number of studies on the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and the employment of English listening strategies is also limited here in China.In addition,domestic studies often select college students or senior high school students as their research subjects,and pay less attention to junior high school students,especially students of Grade three at junior high school.They are in the stage of changing their role from being junior middle school students to senior middle school students.Therefore,this thesis aims to explore the correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and the employment of English listening strategies among ninth graders so as to broaden the scope of the relevant research.Based on Krashen’s affective filter hypothesis,this study aims to select 128 ninth graders from Jiang’an Middle School in Yibin City as research subjects.This study aims to answer these three questions:(1)What is the general situation of ninth graders’ tolerance of ambiguity?(2)What is the general situation of ninth graders’ employment of English listening strategies? Are there any significant differences in the frequency of employing English listening strategies between high-tolerant listeners and low-tolerant listeners of ninth grade?(3)What is the correlation between ninth graders’ tolerance of ambiguity and their employment of English listening strategies?In order to answer these three research questions,this present study adopts questionnaires and an interview.This study employs Ely’s Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale and the adapted questionnaire based on Oxford’s Strategy Inventory for Listening Learning for figuring out the general situation of ninth graders’ tolerance of ambiguity and their use of English listening strategies respectively.After the questionnaires were handed out,SPSS 23.0 was employed to analyze the collected data.Besides,an interview was also applied and 9 interviewees were selected to take part in the interview.The whole interviewing process was recorded by a tape recorder.At last,statistical results and interviewing contents were integrated and analyzed.Major findings are exhibited as follows:First,ninth graders have a moderate level of tolerance of ambiguity generally,which indicates that most students in the ninth grade can tolerate vague and unclear situations in the process of language learning to some extent.Second,the frequency of ninth graders’ employment of English listening strategy belongs to medium level.Memory strategy is the most frequently-used strategy and its mean value is 3.39.Affective strategy is the least frequently-used strategy among the six major listening strategies and its mean value is 3.07.According to the statistical result of independent-samples T test,there exist significant differences in the frequency of applying English listening strategy between high-tolerant listeners and low-tolerant listeners among ninth graders.Thirdly,in general,ninth graders’ tolerance of ambiguity is positively correlated with their use of English listening strategies.Of six specific strategies,tolerance of ambiguity has the strongest correlation with cognitive strategy and has the weakest correlation with affective strategy.The pedagogical implications are given based on the findings mentioned: At first,teachers should pay their attention to students’ tolerance of ambiguity and adopt effective methods to improve students’ tolerance of ambiguity.Secondly,more efforts should be given to help students actively use English listening strategies to improve language listening efficiency,especially for low-tolerant students.