Introduction
1. Background of the Study
Nowadays, with the rapid development of economy and globalization, English hasbecome so indispensible that a great number of people start to leam English with fullenthusiasm and concentration even at very young age in order to master Englishsuccessfully, to lay a solid foundation for their career in the future society, and to moveforward with the step of the whole world. Undoubtedly, the need to be able tocommunicate in English has been increased day by day.Listening comprehension is an important language skill. People tend to believe thatone would develop his listening comprehension naturally, similar to the process ofwalking. Therefore, the training of listening comprehension is often ignored in Englishteaching. However，as a crucial part of communicative competence, listeningcomprehension deserves to be emphasized in the classroom and our daily life. And thereis no doubt that listening comprehension is the most frequently used language activity,which plays important role in second language acquisition.Gradually, many scholars have realized the importance of listening comprehensionand made plenty of investigations about it since the 1970s. According to Cao Peisheng's(2006) statistics, during the past decade, there have been around one hundred papersabout English listening comprehension from different perspectives of view, which includethese following categories: studies about the teaching quality; studies about the learners'acquisition; studies about the factors affecting English listening comprehension,including verbal and non-verbal factors; studies about the evaluation and test of listeningcomprehension; studies about the listening teaching, such as in-class teaching andtextbooks; studies about the techniques and strategies applied in English listeningcomprehension; studies about the usage of multimedia in listening class; studies about thecorrelation between listening comprehension and relevant disciplines related topsycholinguistics，cognitive linguistics, semantic, and cross-cultural communication.Many explorers have full recognized the value of listening comprehension in foreignlanguage learning through much discussion and research.
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2. Purpose of the Study
On the inspiration of the relevant theories and previous researches at home andabroad, the author finds the limitations still exist to a certain degree and decides toconcentrate on the correlation between ambiguity tolerance and listening comprehensionin terms of non-English major students who obtained our little attention before.To the best knowledge of tiie author, there are few relevant published researchesabout the relationship between ambiguity tolerance and listening comprehension ofChinese non-English major students. For example，Zhou (2000) did a research ofthe relationship between ambiguity tolerance and listening comprehension. ZhangQingzong (2004) explored the influence of ambiguity tolerance on the selection oflearning strategies in second language acquisition and he concluded that the learners withhigher ambiguity tolerance tend to perform better than those with lower ambiguitytolerance. Chen Wencnn (2004) investigated the correlation between English majors'scores of TEM-4 and ambiguity tolerance. And a weak positive correlation was alsofound between ambiguity tolerance and their scores of dictation, cloze as well as readingcomprehension. Liu Fuqing and Sun Jiankui (2005) examined the correlation betweenambiguity tolerance and English reading comprehension.
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Chapter l Literature Review
1.1 Ambiguity Tolerance
According to Mclain, tolerance suggests ''begrudging acceptance'' while intolerancesuggests “rejection” and tolerance “extends along a continuum from rejection toattraction” (Mclain, 1993: 184). This definition seems rather vague, which reflects theelusive character inherent in the “tolerance”.To interpret ambiguity is difficult as well. Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary(1974) defines ambiguous as an adjective: doubtful or uncertain, inexplicable; able to beunderstood in two or more conceivable ways. In the Oxford English Dictionary (1991)，ambiguity can have the meanings as follows, which include wavering of opinion,hesitation, doubt, uncertainty，or capable of being understood in two (or more) ways，ordouble or dubious significance.Tolerance, generally speaking, refers to people's acceptance of other people'sdifferent opinions or actions or their endurance ability, while ambiguity is mostly relatedto ambiguous situations，which may be marked by novelty, complexity，insolubility, andinsufficient structure (Tan Di, 2009). In most cases, ambiguity refers to situations. However，there are few researches onthe measiKrement and classification of ambiguous situations in everyday life. As a result,people treat the 細biguous situations normally and handle them in their own ways.Budner (1962) classifies ambiguous situations into three basic types as follows: firstof all，it refers to a new situation in which there are plenty of unfamiliar or insufficientcues; secondly, it refers to a complex situation where there are a large number of hints;thirdly, it refers to a contradictory cases in which the cues suggest contradictory ordifferent structures (Budner, 1962: 30). Therefore, Budner takes ambiguous situations asthose that are not well organized or classified owing to their lack of significant cues.
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1.2 Theoretical Foundations
There are many theories that can support this correlation study，but Krashen's theoryis most close to this theme，and it plays an important role in second language acquisition,and his contribution is also un-absence in linguistics. Therefore，the author choosesKrashen's Affective Filter Hypothesis to support this research. However，it is notscientific to depend on one theory. So the author selects Hartmann's ego boundary theoryfrom Ehrman's view，which can also explain different ambiguity tolerance leading todifferent learning results. What is well known to us all is that not everyone is successful in learning thesecond languages. Nevertheless, what is the reason for that then? According to Krashen'sAffective Filter Hypothesis, various affective factors, including motivation, attitude,self-confidence, and anxiety, play a facilitative but non-causal role in second languageacquisition (Krashen, 1981a). Krashen believes that debilitating anxiety, low self-esteem,lack of motivation so on and so forth would combine to “raise the filter，、to form a“mental block，，，which prevents comprehensible input from reaching tiie languageacquisition device (Krashen, 1981a: 31)，and thereby from being used for acquisition. Putit in another way, positive affect is necessary but not sufficient for second languageacquisition (Diane Larsen-Freeman and Michael H. Long, 2000: 243). What's more，ifthe filter is “down” or low and if there is sufficient comprehensible input obtained, theacquirer's input will come to tifie acquisition device and acquisition will occur naturally.
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Chapter 3 Results and Discussions.........33
3.1 Reliability Analysis of Ambiguity Tolerance Listening .........33
3.2 Results and Discussions of Ambiguity Tolerance and Listening.........34
3.3 Results and Discussions of the Interview.........47
Conclusion.........53
1. Major Findings.........53
2. Implications.........54
3. Limitations and Suggestions for Future Study.........58
Chapter 3Results and Discussions
3.1 Reliability Analysis of Ambiguity Tolerance and Listening Comprehension
The reliability analysis has a direct influence on the content analysis of a certainstudy，and the reliability analysis can make the findings of content analysis more reliable.Therefore，the reliability analysis of ambiguity tolerance and listemng comprehension issupposed to be taken at first in this study before the results and discussion of the statisticsrelated to the study issues.The results of reliability analysis of ambiguity tolerance and listeningcomprehension are shown in Table 3.1，Table 3.2, and Table 3.3 as follows: As the three tables illustrate, there are 160 valid subjects participating in the presentresearch. More specifically, the reliability statistics of the ambiguity tolerance is 0.782,which can be accepted to carry on the following data analysis and discussion. In addition,the reliability statistics of the listening comprehension is 0.802, which proves that thedata here have high reliability. Given the results of the reliability analysis，the findingsand discussions are applicable and reliable on the basis of the statistic data involved inthis study. As a consequence，the relevant analysis and discussion of the statistics in thepresent study should be of high expectation and significance. At present，in order toanswer the three research questions in the study, the analysis and discussion will becarried out one by one in detail and specific explanation in the coming part.
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Conclusion
The present study is focused on exploring the correlation between non-Englishmajors' ambiguity tolerance and listening comprehension. After the quantitative andqualitative analysis, the major findings are presented as follows; The total score of 160 subjects' ambiguity tolerance in this study varies from 12to 42 with the mean score being 27,54. Among them, 23 students are placed at low levelof Mibiguity tolerance, 133 at moderate level, and 4 at high level. It is clear that themoderate level of ambiguity tolerance takes up the majority in total subjects; the lowlevel and high level of ambiguity tolerance just take up the minority. Furthermore, of allthe subjects, the number of the students with high level of ambiguity tolerance is thesmallest. Generally speaking, non-English major students tend to be in moderate level,being slightly lower as a whole，which indicates that the students' ambiguity tolerancestill need motivating and ^ihancing. On the other hand, more specifically, Item 5 {Itbothers me when the teacher uses an English word I donknow.). Item 2 (/ don ’t enjoyreading something English that takes a while to figure out completely,) and Item 3 {Onething I donlike about reading in English is having to guess what the meaning is,) are thehighest score items in the questionnaire, respectively standing for the vocabulary andreading. As for the lowest score items in the questionnaire, Item 7 {When I am speakingin English, I feel uncomfortable if I cannot communicate my idea clearly,)^ Item 12 {Itbothers me that even though I study English grammar, some of it is hard to use inspeaking and writing,), and Item 4 {It bothers me that I don't understand everything theteacher says in English,)虹e listed. The related language leammg fields, includingspeaking，grammar, and listening conq>rehension have been much explained andanalyzed.#p#分页标题#e#
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References (omitted)
