ABSTRACT

A Correlation Study on University Students’ Tolerance of Ambiguity, English Reading Competence and Reading Strategies 

With the development of foreign language learning, tolerance of ambiguity, as an essential cognitive variable, has gained more and more attention from both home and abroad. Reading competence is considered to be a comprehensive ability of second language acquisition. This study aims to investigate the correlation among university students’ tolerance of ambiguity (TOA), English reading competence and choice of reading strategies. 

The research subjects are composed of 102 non-English-major senior students from Jiangsu University. The instrument used to measure tolerance of ambiguity here is a modified version of Ely’s (1989) Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale; Reading competence is measured by the reading section of the College English Test Band 6 (CET 6); and Chamot & Kupper’s (1989) Reading Strategies Questionnaire is used for measuring utilization of reading strategies. SPSS 17.0 is used here for data analysis. 

Chinese university non-English-major students showed a moderate level of ambiguity tolerance. A positive significant correlation is found between tolerance of ambiguity and reading competence. Also, TOA has a significant impact on reading strategy utilization.

Key words：Tolerance of ambiguity, reading comprehension, reading strategy                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

摘 要

模糊容忍度與大學(xué)生英語(yǔ)閱讀水平

及閱讀策略的相關(guān)性研究

隨著外語(yǔ)教學(xué)的發(fā)展，模糊容忍度，作為一項(xiàng)重要的認(rèn)知因素，越來(lái)越受到國(guó)內(nèi)外學(xué)者的關(guān)注。而閱讀理解能力被認(rèn)為是二語(yǔ)習(xí)得領(lǐng)域中重要的綜合能力之一。本文旨在探究大學(xué)生模糊容忍度、英語(yǔ)閱讀水平及閱讀策略選擇之間的相關(guān)性。

本文的研究對(duì)象由102名江蘇大學(xué)非英語(yǔ)專業(yè)的大四學(xué)生組成。修改后的“第二語(yǔ)言模糊容忍度測(cè)試量表”和“英語(yǔ)閱讀策略”兩套問(wèn)卷分別用以測(cè)量模糊容忍度和英語(yǔ)閱讀策略的使用，學(xué)生英語(yǔ)閱讀能力則使用大學(xué)英語(yǔ)六級(jí)測(cè)試(CET-6)閱讀部分的成績(jī)測(cè)量。并且利用統(tǒng)計(jì)軟件SPSS 17.0進(jìn)行數(shù)據(jù)分析。

研究表明中國(guó)非英語(yǔ)專業(yè)大學(xué)生表現(xiàn)出中等的模糊容忍度水平，模糊容忍度和英語(yǔ)閱讀水平顯著的正相關(guān)關(guān)系，并且模糊容忍度對(duì)閱讀策略的使用有重要的影響，本研究結(jié)果對(duì)于外語(yǔ)教學(xué)有一定的啟示。

關(guān)鍵詞: 模糊容忍度，閱讀理解，閱讀策略