The 9th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ELT) In China (ELT2020)

613 / 2020-03-20 22:30:36

The Relationship between Tolerance of Ambiguity and Multilingualism Revisited

tolerance of ambiguity; multilingualism; English proficiency; personality trait; hierarchical regression; effect size

Language and Education in Multilingual Settings > Language and Education in Multilingual Settings

Tolerance of ambiguity (TA), ‘the tendency to perceive ambiguous situations as desirable’ (Budner, 1962, p. 29), is highly relevant to second/additional language learning. In multilingualism research, recent studies (e.g. Dewaele & Li, 2013) has examined TA vis-à-vis multilingualism based on Herman, Stevens, Bird, Mendenhall, and Oddou’s (2010) instrument, and identified a TA core that is hypothesised to exist in different cultural contexts (Wei & Hu, 2019). The present study revisited the relationship between TA and multilingualism by surveying 302 English-using multilinguals in China. Factor analysis confirmed the presence of the TA core in the EFL context; hierarchical regression models predicting TA identified multilingualism (respectively operationalised as a global measure of multilingualism and self-rated proficiency in English), age, and education qualification as potentially ‘important’ (in terms of effect size) predictors for TA. Furthermore, as the entering sequence of the predictors can affect the statistical results, providing a range of effect sizes for each predictor (based on all possible sequences) in hierarchical regression is proposed as a more refined data analysis approach. Future research directions (e.g. considering a wider multilingual population) are also suggested.