Investigating the Relationship between Tolerance of Ambiguity, Individual Characteristics and Listening Comprehension Ability among Iranian EFL Learners

Abstract

This study investigated the relationship between tolerance of ambiguity, individual differences and the listening comprehension ability of university students. The study was carried out at Azad University of Ahvaz, Foreign Languages Teaching Centre. It involved 150 MA and BA students in the Faculty of language teaching center in university (78 females, 72 males) with the age range of 18-40. At first the Persian version of the questionnaire of tolerance of ambiguity provided by Ely (1995) was distributed among students of each class. Then the second questionnaire which was listening comprehension one was given to the students to collect the data on the base is of these hypotheses: H0 1 : There is no significant relationship between university students' tolerance of ambiguity and their listening comprehension ability. H0 2 : Gender has no effect on tolerance of ambiguity of the students. H0 3 : There is no significant relationship between age and student' tolerance of ambiguity. H0 4 : There is no significant relationship between academic level and students' tolerance of ambiguity Findings showed that there is a significant relationship between tolerance of ambiguity and listening comprehension. To answer second hypothesis, independent samples t-test was run. The results showed that gender did not have any significant impact on the students' ambiguity tolerance. The results one-way ANOVA depicted that there is significant difference between three different age groups (below 25, between 25-29, and above 29) (p<0.05) in terms of tolerance of ambiguity (F=4.291), p=0. 015. And at last, the results of the independent sample t-test showed that there is a significant difference between these two academic levels in tolerance of ambiguity.