حسن سودمندافشار

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship among language learner beliefs, language learning styles, ambiguity tolerance and listening comprehension of Iranian senior EFL students. To this end, 487 senior EFL students from various universities in Iran took part in the study by completing the Beliefs about Language Learning Inventory (BALLI) developed by Horwitz (1987), Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (PLSPQ) developed by Reid (1987), the Second Language Tolerance of Ambiguity Scale (SLTAS) developed by Ely (1995), and a listening comprehension test excerpted from listening part of IELTS book (Jakeman & McDowell, 1997). The participants were selected based on cluster random sampling. The reliability and validity of BALLI and PLSPQ questionnaires had already been established in EFL context by Kasraee Nejad (2014) and Reid (1995) respectively. Additionally, using Chronbach’s Alpha and factor analysis, the SLTAS questionnaire was found to have acceptable reliability and validity rates in Iranian EFL context. The results obtained from six separate Pearson Product Moment Correlations indicated that there was a significant positive correlation between a) learner beliefs and listening comprehension, b) learning styles and listening comprehension, c) ambiguity tolerance and listening comprehension, d) learner beliefs and learning styles, e) learner beliefs and ambiguity tolerance, and finally f) no correlation between learning styles and ambiguity tolerance of Iranian senior EFL students. Moreover, the results of multiple regression analyses demonstrated that ambiguity tolerance was a stronger predictor of listening comprehension. Since the results of this study indicated that learner beliefs, learning styles as well as ambiguity tolerance were all strong predictors of listening comprehension, it seems reasonable to suggest that EFL students try to grow more positive beliefs about L2 learning and the target language culture. Using