A Study On The Correlation Between Tolerance Of Ambiguity And Reading Competence Of Senior High School Students

Ambiguity phenomenon,as a psychological concept,first appeared in the field of psychology before being introduced into the field of linguistics.Many studies have shown that students with high ambiguity tolerance have a stronger sense of exploration and can tolerate semantic ambiguity or ambiguity in their daily learning to a certain extent,which is conducive to their own knowledge learning and the improvement of their abilities.At the present stage of English learning,reading is full of ambiguity,and the language learner’s tolerance of ambiguity will also have an impact on the reading effect.Senior high school is an important stage of English learning.By investigating and analyzing the situation of ambiguity tolerance of senior high school students and its correlation with English reading ability,the author hopes that this paper can make teachers and students realize the importance of ambiguity tolerance and then choose appropriate reading strategies to improve their reading abilities.In this study,a combination of questionnaire and interview is adopted,and students from two parallel classes in a senior high school in Wuchang are selected as survey subjects.The author adopts the Ambiguity Tolerance Questionnaire of Ely(1989),and Oxford(1990)’reading strategies and English reading comprehension test to analyze the students’ levels of ambiguity tolerance,and the use of reading strategies and reading test scores.The author adopts the interview to understand students’ levels of ambiguity tolerance and reading strategies choices and usages,and investigates the relation between ambiguity tolerance and English reading ability,and puts forward effective suggestions for reading teaching in accordance with the results of the survey.Through the study,the majority of senior high school students’ tolerance of ambiguity is hovering below the medium level,and the degree of ambiguity tolerance is closely related to students’ reading performance in the exam.It is also found that students with different levels of tolerance of ambiguity have different reading strategies.Students’ score with higher tolerance of ambiguity is far higher in reading tests than those with lower tolerance of ambiguity.Therefore,there is a positive correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and reading scores.As for the tolerance of ambiguity in English learning,the author draws the following conclusions: firstly,both English teachers and students should pay attention to the exploration and improvement of the tolerance of ambiguity in high school English learning.Secondly,teachers should pay attention to the differences in the tolerance of ambiguity among different students in the teaching process.Finally,teachers should cultivate students’ awareness of choosing and using reading strategies so as to improve their reading abilities.