Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Study
Second language learning is fraught with uncertainty. Seldom do we know theprecise meaning of a new lexical item, understand the suitable situation of thesubjunctive mood, or feel that we are pronouncing an L2 sound with totalauthenticity. As for Chinese EFL learners, leaning English is a matter of matchingnew even unknown information to Chinese; while incongruity between English andChinese makes learners live with a certain amount of vagueness, and thus the onewho owns the ability of such adaptation and tolerance is predicted to be a successfullanguage learner. Furnham (1994) states that tolerance of ambiguity is the way anindividual (or group) considers and deals with information about ambiguoussituations when they encounter a range of unfamiliar, complex or incongruent cues.This process incorporates a range of individual’s reactions extending along acontinuum from total agreement to total disagreement (McLain, 1993). Research ontolerance of ambiguity is originated in an American psychologistFrenkel-Brunswick, who indicates that intolerance for ambiguity is “a tendency toresort to black-white solutions, to arrive at premature closure…often at the neglectof reality” (Frenkel-Brunswick, 1948, p.115). Ely (1989) has developed the itemfrom a second-language-acquisition perspective, which can be defined as “therelative degree of discomfort associated with thinking: that one does not know or understand exact meaning; that one is not able to express one’s ideas accurately orexactly; that one is dealing with overly-complex language; that there is a lack ofcorrespondence between the L1 and the L2.”
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Study
Discussions and studies regarding ambiguity tolerance usually concern ESLcontexts (e.g. Chapelle & Roberts, 1986) and usually focus on general languagelearning achievement or strategies(Lee, 1998; Owen & Sweeney, 2017), withexceptions of those (El-Koumy, 2017; Erten & Topkaya, 2017) who associatedambiguity tolerance with reading comprehension. Furthermore, recent years haveseen an emergence of studies investigating affective issues in skill specific domains(Keshavarz & Assar, 2017; Zhang & Wu, 2017). Even so, these researches arescarce in the world and few studies are found investigating this trait and its relationto foreign language reading strategies.Therefore, this thesis is an attempt to explore the correlation betweenambiguity tolerance and reading strategies, upon which further observations aremade—what are the reading strategy distinctions between students with higherlevels of ambiguity tolerance and reading ability and those with lower. Furthermore,the author conducts a training session involving tolerance of ambiguity, aiming atshedding light on teaching practice from a pedagogical perspective. Teachers areprovided with powerful implications and suggestions to optimize reading activity,and learners can benefit a more sufficient understanding on ambiguity tolerance andreading strategy about themselves.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Tolerance of Ambiguity
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2017), the term“ambiguity” is described as “the state of having more than one possible meaning”or ，英语论文题目，英语论文范文
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