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Article · Bulletin of the Karaganda University Pedagogy series · June 27, 2026

The use of hedging in EFL students’ academic writing

D.E. Shaikenova, Saule Tulepova, Assel Chaklikova, Madina Bekturova

Madina Bekturova
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Abstract

Academic writing inEnglish is a special genre which requires maintaining a certain tone and adhering to conventions accepted inthe scholarly community.Writers should strive toexpress their stance appropriately byavoiding overly categorical statementsand overgeneralizations.One ofthe ways toachieve thisis using hedging strategies.Therefore, teaching hedging should bean obligatory aspect in an academic writing course todevelop EFL(English as aforeign language) students’ academic writing competence.Thisstudy aimed toexplore theEFL students’usage of various hedging types andacademic writing teachers’ perceptions of hedging instruction.Tothis end,corpus analysis ofundergraduate EFLstudents’forty academic essays was conducted toidentify hedging types according tothe framework ofSalager-Meyer,and six academic writing teachers have been interviewed toelicit their perceptions.Itwas revealed that ofall seven types ofhedges found inthe essays, students could appropriately utilize mainly two types.Thisdemonstrates that EFLlearners struggle when expressing tentative statements in academic writing.Theinterview findings also imply thatmore attention should begiven toteaching hedging explicitly and considering integrating more practice inthe syllabus forthe academic writing course.Thisstudy might behelpful inraising awareness ofthe problems associated with hedging instruction inacademic writing classes as well as contributing tothe literature inacademic writing research.

Discourse Analysis in Language StudiesEFL/ESL Teaching and LearningLinguistics and Language Analysishedgingacademic writingEFL learners

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