Developing Academic Voice: A Study of Hedging in EFL Learners
INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON HOLISTIC DEVELOPMENT& POSITIVE EDUCATION, Girne, Kıbrıs (Kktc), 7 - 09 Mayıs 2026, ss.1390-1400, (Tam Metin Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Tam Metin Bildiri
- Basıldığı Şehir: Girne
- Basıldığı Ülke: Kıbrıs (Kktc)
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.1390-1400
- Açık Arşiv Koleksiyonu: AVESİS Açık Erişim Koleksiyonu
- Hakkari Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
Hedging means using words to make claims with less confidence. It helps to negotiate knowledge between the reader and the writer. For academic writing, it is a very useful skill. Most EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners haven’t mastered hedging fully and tend to use informal words. This study focuses on the development of one specific skill, hedging, in a sample of one population, English Language Teaching (ELT) students. The population includes students of different levels of the ELT course. Based on the levels, the population is divided into two groups: the preparatory class students and the students in the third year of the ELT course. This study looks at the written work (text samples) of each of the student groups, and analyzes it using different criteria. The research is designed using a corpus-based mixed-methods approach and is informed by the work of Ken Hyland (1998). He identified different types of hedging and suggested classifications based on hedging words. For this research, a sample of 82 students, including 41 preparatory students and 41 third-year students, is used. The total number of words included in the text samples is 24,600. The text samples underwent both qualitative and quantitative analyses. In the analyses, different criteria were used to identify the number of hedges in a text sample (Hedge Count). Other criteria were used to identify the functions hedges served in each text sample. The analyses uncovered the students’ academic voice and the stance they portrayed as writers. The third-year students exhibit a higher degree of sophistication in their writing, with increased hedging. The preparatory class students hedge using only first-person subjective (personal) hedging, while the third-year students hedge using an impersonal writing style, with increased use of more formal hedging words that reflect a higher degree of academic writing. The study emphasizes the value of direct teaching of hedging and academic stance. It also adds to learner corpus research by presenting findings on the enhancement of pragmatic and rhetorical skills concerning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) academic writing.