Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background of the Research
Ambiguity is traditionally known as the expressions which have more than onemeaning and thus may cause trouble to language learners. The psychologists whostudy cognition hold, however, foreign language learning is a progress fromambiguity to certainty, and tolerance of ambiguity is an indication of cognitivedevelopment in the process of language learning. People seem to believe the signs ofa “good” language refer to clarity and precision, and vagueness, imprecision,ambiguity as well as uncertainty should be avoided. Whereas it is not the case in reallife. Ambiguity, as one of the inherent and intrinsic characteristics of natural language,is used by people to convey information and communicate with each other in dailylife. Additionally, a large amount of studies at home and aboard have directed thatambiguity actually exists in many language uses, such as foreign language reading.Many applied psycholinguists and foreign language learning theoreticians claimthat successful language learning including reading requires a certain degree ofambiguity tolerance. Reiss (1985) finds that the students consider themselves as goodlanguage learners and finds tolerance of ambiguity is important to them. She explainsthat good language learners are those who are “fairly comfortable with ambiguity”.Contrarily, if learners do not realize the existence of ambiguities during languageacquisition and intolerate them, then their language acquisition will be seriouslyimpeded. Liu Fuqiang (2005) tests Chinese students on correlation of tolerance ofambiguity and English reading performance. The results show that TOA has apositive correlation with reading performance. The higher the level of TOA is, thebetter students perform in reading.
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1.2 Purpose and Significance of the Research
Exponential importance has been attached to reading comprehension in manyproficiency tests, from Entrance Examination for College and the College EnglishTest to the Entrance Examination for Postgraduate Candidates. Reading anxiety isgenerally believed to be one of the emotional factors affecting reading proficiency andperformance (Gardner & Maclntyre, 1991). The occurrence of reading anxiety islikely to prevent readers from understanding the messages effectively. Similarly, asthe essential role of TOA plays in theoretical foreign language learning framework, itdoes act in some way on reading process, one of four skills. Although someresearches have been separately conducted concerning the effects of TOA and anxietyon language learning, few has been done to investigate how both twist to react onlanguage learning as well as the relationship between the two.Hence this research is designed to investigate current situation of non-Englishmajors’ TOA and ERA and to explore the relationship between the two. Thesignificance of the research can be shown in the following two aspects. For one thing,this research is an attempt to share teachers and students with a good understandingabout TOA and ERA. For another, it aims at examining the differences andcorrelation in TOA and ERA among students. It is expected that the results of theempirical research will bring some implications on the effectiveness of Englishreading comprehension and thus make a further knowledge of how to create acomfortable and supportive classroom environment that facilitates the languagelearners aware of the role that TOA plays in regulating reading anxiety.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Tolerance of Ambiguity
English learning is a process of constantly generating high ambiguity. Everythingin English, including phonetics, vocabulary, syntax, discourse, and culturalbackground, is almost first met by Chinese learners. It is of great importance toexplore the nature of TOASome researchers abroad and at home approach the nature of TOA from differentperspectives. Tolerance of Ambiguity (TOA) was first stated by Frenkel Brunswik, anAmerican psychologist
