An investigation into hedging devices in academic writing of vietnamese third-year university students at the university of da nang – university of foreign language studies

Abstract

This thesis examined how the third-year students employ the hedging devices in their writing. With the high demand in learning foreign languages nowadays, achieving proficiency of English seems to be the goal that everyone wants to try to accomplish. Students, especially the third-year students in Department of English at the University of Foreign Language Studies, are the well-qualified subjects to the study. The study was designed in quantitative approach, together with the methods such as descriptive, analytic and inductive methods. The data of the study was collected in 200 sample essays of 200 students whose majors are English. The researcher has carried out step by step to find out the present situation of hedging devices in academic writing in the level of university students. Firstly, the data was collected and classified from 200 essays in style of academic writing with the given topic in the limited time. Secondly, the researcher analyzed the data based on the suggested framework. Comparing the data collected with the theories suggested, the researcher came up with the results to fulfill the proposed questions. A number of hedging devices which belonged to eight main types of hedges were employed in the students’ essays. Among these, the most commonly used hedging were the hedging verbs and epistemic modals, which confirms the claims of the previous researchers and scholars. Simultaneously, the errors related to hedging devices appearing in the essays were also analyzed and the causes of the errors were proposed. The differences between L1 and L2 of the students and the unawareness of the students about the role of hedging devices in academic writing might be the two main causes of the errors in the students’ essays. The results of the use of hedges and the typical hedging errors might lead students as well as teachers of English to have appropriate strategies in studying and teaching English.