Page 330 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

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students study hard at all times. The shared and mutual assumptions preva- lent in various discourse traditions apply to allow the reader to under- stand that the writer knows that 100% of students do not work hard 100% of the time. In this case, the reader does not necessarily think that the writer's text is overstated, and reality hedging is assumed by both the writer and the reader.
THE SNOWBALL EFFECT TO EXPAND HEDGING REPERTOIRE
In L2 instruction, teaching NNS writers to hedge often requires persistence and effort because, in many discourse traditions other than Anglo-Ameri- can, hedging is not considered to be an important feature of academic prose. In many cases, L2 writers have a restricted lexical range of accessible hedging devices. If a small number of hedges are used repeatedly, the L2 text may appear to be redundant and repetitious. Hence, teaching students to hedge their claims also has an attendant objective of helping them ex- pand their lexical repertoire and advance their awareness of the important differences between academic writing and other written and conversational registers (Jordan, 1997).
The instruction on hedging may need to begin with lexically and syntac- ticallyaccessibletypesofhedges,suchasadverbsoffrequency(usually, often) and quantifiers (most, many, some}. These two types of hedges can be used by L2 learners even at the low to intermediate level of proficiency. Building on this base, teaching the meanings and hedging functions of modal verbs, such as can and may, can further help students increase their lexical range at a relatively low cost in terms of work and time.
Adjective and adverb hedges are by far the most numerous in English, and they include a wide variety of lexically simple items (e.g., almost and only] as well as semantically and syntactically complex items (e.g., apparently and relative to). However, even though adjectival and adverbial hedges are numerous, L2 writers certainly do not need to become fluent users of the entire group. In fact in combination with frequency adverbs, quantifiers, and modal verbs learned earlier, a relatively good range of hedges can be- come accessible for use in essays and assignments if only a portion of adjec- tive and adverb hedges are addressed in instruction.
An important ingredient in teaching NNS writers to construct ac- ademic text entails examining the features that should be avoided. These include hedging devices associated with informal and conver- sational register, which are rarely encountered in academic prose (e.g., kind of, maybe, and to besupposed to). A prevalence of such hedges can make a piece of writing appear conversational and inappropri- ate in tone.
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