Functional Bilingualism: Contribution of Ambiguity Tolerance to Learning a Foreign Language

EasyChair Preprint 4436

Abstract

Foreign or second language learning has been currently recognized as a complex and multifaceted process by its essence. From the functional bilingualism perspective the research focus, when examining teaching and learning a foreign language, is mostly on using the language being studied for special purposes. On the other hand, when learning a foreign language, there is some kind of the target-language culture transformation into language learners’ worldview happens. In connection to this, ambiguity tolerance can be viewed as a psychological factor that contributes to foreign language learning, being an indicator of language learners’ openness to the world of this new culture. Meanwhile, little is known about if there is any difference in ambiguity tolerance between foreign language learners depending on the target language being learnt. The paper presents a study aimed at exploring between-group differences in ambiguity tolerance among linguistic students whose majors were foreign languages belonging to different language groups, namely English (n=130), Chinese (n=110) and the Romance languages (n=78). The study participants’ ambiguity tolerance was measured by McLain’s MSTAT-I research tool. A comparative analysis of the results obtained revealed a statistically significant difference in ambiguity tolerance between the study participants majoring in the Romance languages and those learning English as their major. The study results are discussed from the functional bilingualism perspective and specifics of the languages concerned.

Keyphrases: Ambiguity Tolerance, foreign language learning, functional bilingualism, linguistic majors, target-culture transformation

@booklet{EasyChair:4436,
  author    = {Inna Atamanova},
  title     = {Functional Bilingualism: Contribution of Ambiguity Tolerance to Learning a Foreign Language},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 4436},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2020}}