Exploring The Effects Of Ambiguity Tolerance On Language

.4.2 Studies on Ambiguity Tolerance

As mentioned previously, the effects of ambiguity tolerance on speaking ability has not been investigated by any research studies; however, its effects on different aspects of language learning has been investigated. Among the earliest studies in this regard the research done by Naiman et al. (1987), in which they found that ambiguity tolerance was a powerful predictor of the success of high school learners of French in Toronto. In another study done by Chapelle and Roberts (1986), it was revealed that learners with a high level of ambiguity tolerance were more successful on language tasks in general. A few studies (Chapelle, 1983; Horng-Yi, 1992; Khajeh 2002; Mori, 1999; Yea-Fen, 1995) also investigated

The rationale behind the study was that several studies have so far indicated a correlation between learning strategies andpersonality, and also they have shown that certain personality types have differentlevels of ambiguitytolerance. The objective of the study was to examine the effects oflexical ambiguity in CALL on the beginning 2ndlanguage learners. It is important to point out that lexical ambiguity was operationally defined as whether or not theCALL context provides first-language sentence-level translations for different meanings.In addition, the study sought to determine if learners’ personality types (measured by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, MBTI) influence the second language vocabulary retentionindependently of the translationissue and in an ambiguous CALL

For instance, MoallemiSharabiani (2011) investigated the relationship between Iranian EFL learners'ambiguitytolerance and guessing the meaning of unknown vocabulary items. The participants of the study were 160 intermediate students who were learning English at SiminLanguage Learning Institute. The participants were initially given the Michigan Proficiency Test to make sure that they were homogeneous in terms of theirlanguage proficiency. Subsequently, they were given a tolerance of ambiguity scale (SLTAS). The participants were, afterwardsgiven apre-test that contained 200 words for the participants to see whether or not they were familiar with the meanings of the vocabulary items. During the treatment sessions, the researcher practiced guessing strategies with the learners by giving them four reading passages during four sessions and also by askingthem to guess the meanings of the unknown words incorporated into the passages. Finally, a post-test was administered, in which thestudents had to read two passages that contained some unknownwords selected from the unfamiliar words of the pre-test.Then, they were asked to guess themeaning of those unknown words while reading the passages. The results of the Pearson ProductMoment correlation indicated that the tolerance of ambiguity levels of learners have a significant relationship with the participants' guessing