Lesson Title: Hedging in Academic Writing
Class/Student Information: I taught this lesson to seven graduate students enrolled in my
academic writing course. Most of these students are finishing their doctoral coursework in a
subfield of engineering (e.g., mechanical, electrical, materials science). Students represented a
variety of native language backgrounds, including Arabic, Telugu, Farsi, Tamil, and Hindi.
Length of Class: 2 hours and 50 minutes (ED: Sharon, it was impossible to show everything in
the three clips. If there's anything you want to see more of, please let me know.)
Overall Instructional Goal (IMPORTANT!):
The overall instructional goal is to help students understand how hedges are used in academic
writing, the various classifications of hedges (e.g. parts of speech, certainty levels), and how
hedging is used in academic writing and speech communication.
Learning Objectives:
1. Describe the different purposes and strengths of hedges in academic writing
2. Investigate hedging in students' own academic writing and compare it to how hedging is used
in expert academic writing and speech communication
3. Demonstrate a understanding of hedging in academic writing
How will you measure each objective?
1. Describe the different purposes and strengths of hedges in academic writing
 Students will comment on appropriate uses of hedges in authentic examples of
academic writing (see attached PPT presentation), students will conduct a corpus
analysis of hedging in their own writing as well as hedging in their discipline and in
speech communication (see attached corpus worksheet)
2. Investigate hedging in your academic writing and compare it to how hedging is used in
expert academic writing and speech communication
 Students will conduct three corpus analyses and discuss their results after each task
3. Demonstrate a understanding of hedging in academic writing
 Students will conference on hedge use in each other's writing, students will compile
the results of their corpus finding into an informal 2-3 minute oral presentation.
Justification for Lesson (IMPORTANT!):
Hedging is a critical language device used in academic writing. Using hedges appropriately helps
academic researchers (a) acculturate into a specific discourse community, (b) avoid confrontation
with their readers by reducing unsubstantiated or bold claims, and (c) enhance their credibility as
mindful researchers. This is also an important vocabulary lesson that shows students how their
language use compares to experts in their field.
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Materials: YouTube video clip (linked in Orientation section), instructor PowerPoint, corpus
task worksheet, and student hedge PowerPoint (see attached PDF).
The Lesson Plan
(describe the activities)
WHY & HOW
(justifications for activities &
grouping of students)
Orientation (5 mins)
Show a YouTube video clip illustrating a reliance on
vocabulary (mainly hedges) as well as how a group
communicates with each other:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjyLUXPTyP4
Student Reaction: Do we talk like this? Would you want to
hang out with this group? Would they have difficulty
communicating with each other?
I thought this clip was an excellent
illustration of how hedges can be
overused, but, at the same time, how a
discourse community can
communicate with each other with a
limited vocabulary. The irony of the
video is that the group is discussing
the limitations of the word like, yet
they are unable to reflect on their own
use of language.
Transition: Language can acculturate us into a discourse community, but it can also limit who we
communicate with.
Presentation (30 mins)
Class Discussion: What are some examples of hedges? How do
hedges differ from modals? What do you remember about your
ELL modal learning?
A wide range of words and phrases can be used in hedging:
Modal auxiliary verbs:
can, could, may, might, should, would
This lesson is an extension of the
modal lesson I created for the Content
unit. Modal teaching is an important
part of ELL writing instruction, but
hedges are also vital to successful
academic writing. Hedges help
acculturate researchers into their
targeted discourse community via a set
of agreed upon, rhetorical vocabulary.
In addition to acculturation, hedges
help researchers avoid confrontation
with their readers, but they can also
add some precision to writing (e.g.,
Students typically took 10 minutes to
complete their writing assessment).
More importantly, appropriate use of
hedging establishes researchers'
credibility because it helps them
discuss their findings within the
Other modal verbs:
appear, look, seem, tend
Probability adjectives:
likely, possible, probable, unlikely
Probability adverbs:
perhaps, possibly, probably, presumably
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Frequency adverbs:
generally, usually, often, occasionally, seldom
The YouTube clip illustrated how hedges and other language
devices unite a discourse community, but why else do we need
to hedge in our academic writing?
Class PowerPoint Discussion: Are all hedges created equal?
Let's look at a few examples that show various certainty levels.
Identify the hedges in the slide and then determine if the
certainty level is appropriate (see attached PowerPoint).
Low certainty hedges:
might, could, possibly, may
Medium certainty hedges (preferred in academic
writing):
probably, will, should, usually, likely
High certainty boosters:
is, must, certainly, always
Class Discussion: Why do L2 writers often struggle with
hedging more than native speakers?
parameters of their
study/methodological design.
There are different classifications for
hedges, which move beyond the
hedges classified as modals/auxiliary
verbs. Developing academic writers
need to be exposed to these alternative
words because it expands their
vocabulary as well as more
appropriate words for particular
contexts.
Students also need to learn that no two
hedges are alike – in addition to
hedges being classified by different
parts of speech, they can also be
classified by their level of certainty.
For example, the popular can is a low
certainty hedge, while probably,
usually, and likely show a medium
level of certainty. Words like must and
is, on the other hand, show a high
level of certainty and are then
classified as boosters.
Finally, I believe it's important that
non-native English speakers recognize
why hedging is an important part of
their academic writing as well as ELL
learning. Just as with modals, there are
not a lot of direct word-to-word
translations from many native
languages and English. Hedges like
may, which can convey both
permission and possibility in English,
could be two different words in a
speaker's native language.
Transition: Let's begin by exploring hedges in your writing, not your classmates' writing or in your
discipline's writing. I've created a baby corpus for each of you, which contains all the writing you did this
semester. I've compiled a corpus for myself so that I can demonstrate the tools I want you to use in
AntConc, the text processing tool.
Engagement (30 mins)
TASK #1—Identify Hedges in your own Writing
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The first step to improving your
writing is to first identify what you
already do well and what you need to
Load your writing corpus and the 65-word hedge list into
AntConc. Use the Word List, Concordance, and Concordance
Plot features to address the following:

How many different types of hedges do you use in your
own writing?

What are the hedges you use in your writing most
frequently?

Explore how you use a few of these frequent hedges.
For example, do you hedge in clusters? Do you use
hedges to modify each other (e.g., would might)?
Identify a few examples of where you hedge
appropriately as well as examples where you might have
included a different hedge.
1. Example 1
2. Example 2
3. Example 3

Do you tend to use more low or medium certainty
hedges?
Evaluation (10 mins)
Student Talk Back: What was the top hedge in your individual
writing corpus? How many different types of hedges did you
use in your writing? Were the majority of your hedges low or
medium certainty?
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work on. This is why I had students
first explore hedging in their own
work.
The tasks I had students do with the
corpus reflect many of the points
made in the YouTube video and the
presentation sections, namely how
often hedging is used, where in a text
it is used, and how much of a hedge
variety students use.
To guide students toward these
explorations, I first demo the task with
a corpus of my own writing and then
give them a worksheet for recording
their observations.
A crucial step in any corpus-based
learning is constant comprehension
checks.
In my video clips, you'll see some
instances of me walking around the
classroom and discussing students'
findings with them. In addition, it's
important to have a full-class
discussion after each task to
emphasize critical findings that then
allows students to begin synthesizing
Engagement (20 mins)
TASK #2—Identify Hedges in Writing from your Academic
Discipline
Load the corpus for your academic discipline into AntConc and
compare it against the 65-word hedge list. Use the Word List,
Concordance, and Concordance Plot features to address the
following:

How many different types of hedges do experts in your
discipline use?

What are the hedges that experts in your discipline use most
frequently?

Explore how experts use hedging in their writing. For
example, do experts use more or different types of hedges
than you? Identify a few examples of strong hedging as well
as examples where alternative hedging might have been
better.
1. Example 1
2. Example 2
3. Example 3
Evaluation (10 mins)
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these findings. As with any "big data"
approach, it's easy to get overwhelmed
with information and sometimes
difficult to interpret how it all relates
to the topic under investigation.
Now that students understand how
they use hedging, it's important to
provide a comparable dataset.
One of the things my research finds is
the crucial differences between
developing and expert writers. The
native speaker status of a writer is not
a pronounced as some might (want to)
believe. The fact is—all students,
regardless of native language, have to
learn the same ("foreign") text types
and rhetorical styles of academic
writing. Even native English speakers
have to explicitly learn these devices
in ways that ELLs might acquire
another language.
This is such an important point that's
being made in corpus linguistics
research right now, and I don’t think it
can be underscored enough. A
developing academic writer is a
developing academic writer. Period.
What students almost always find in
these corpus tasks is that they hedge
less and use less variety than experts
in their field. I also don't know of a
better way to emphasize the
importance of vocabulary than this. I
believe the students I teach benefit so
much from these types of lessons
because they have a communication
situation/goal that they are working
toward. Research is in their bones;
they want the tools to communicate
those ideas with credibility and
authority.
See earlier notes on the rationale for
constant comprehension checks after
What did you find?
each corpus based tasks.
Engagement (30 mins)
TASK #3—Identify Hedges in Speech Communication
Load the speech communication corpus into AntConc and
compare it against the 65-word hedge list. Use the Word List,
Concordance, and Concordance Plot features to address the
following:

How many different types of hedges are used in speech
communication?

What are the hedges used most frequently in speech
communication?
Explore how you use a few of these frequent hedges. How
are hedges used in speech communication the same or
differently from written communication? Are the contexts
surrounding a specific hedge different between these two
registers? Provide some examples.

In addition to summarizing results
from this task, it's important to
compare/contrast these results against
the first task. Again, students usually
see a pronounced difference between
the variety of hedges they use and the
variety of hedges experts in their field
use. This is when frequency data
becomes a useful teaching tool.
To provide one more comparable, I
usually throw in some speech
communication data.
This relates to a point I made in my
last lesson plan. We watched a clip
about this idea in 802 from the
documentary, Do you Speak
American? In the clip, the assistant
managing editor of The Columbus
Dispatch discussed how his print
journalists were being affected by the
spoken journalism of radio and TV,
including the misuse of words like
importantly, nonplussed, and
bemused. The editor affirmed his
employees were good journalists, but
they could not always distinguish
between features of speech and written
communication.
The purpose of this exploration is to
delineate between hedging in
academic and speech registers, and
also identify if students are in
jeopardy of writing in more of the
style that most speak in.
See earlier rationales for last two
tasks.
1. Example 1
2. Example 2
3. Example 3
Evaluation (10 mins.)
Transition: It's one thing to examine your writing on the finite
level that corpus approaches provide, but now I want you to
gain a more holistic use of how you hedge.
Engagement (20 mins)
This is one part of the lesson I didn't
get to show in the video clips.
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I’m handing out copies of your Critical Review, which was the
first assignment you completed in this class. I want you to
review this assignment with a focus on hedging in just 2-3
minutes.
Then, I’m going to give your critical review to another peer. He
or she will evaluate the text for hedges used, noting frequency,
types, certainty levels, and clusters.
After this review is completed, I want you to conference with
your partner. Your partner will first summarize what he or she
found in your writing with relation to hedging and then you’ll
compare that information against your corpus results. This
exercise will help confirm what you found independently as
well as suggest other patterns you might have missed.
As valuable as I think corpus-driven
lessons are, they are not for everyone.
I developed this exercise to expand
upon investigating language in context
as well as account for various learning
styles. Hedges tend to cluster, which
students might be able to see more
clearly in a full document rather than
concordance lines.
This activity also provides another
built-in comprehension check. Some
students won't take to the corpus
lessons and/or misinterpret the results.
Having a peer summarize what he/she
observes in their partner's writing can
reaffirm the corpus findings and/or
help students see hedging in a way
they could not from the corpus.
Transition: I want you to synthesize all this information. On your desktop, there’s a file called
StudentHedgePPT. There are four slides in this presentation:
The first slide asks you to input information on the number and the types of hedges found in your own
corpus compared to your discipline’s corpus. This information will illustrate how your hedging compares
to your academic field.
The second slide asks you to input the top hedges in your own corpus, your discipline’s corpus, and in
the speech communication corpus. This information illustrates how the hedges you use in your writing
compares to your academic field as well as the hedges used frequently in speech communication.
The third slide asks you to input two examples from your writing. You can pull these examples from the
concordance work you did in AntConc. Choose examples that reflect your best use of hedging or where
you could have hedged more or differently.
The final slide asks you to input two recommendations for using hedges in future academic writing.
Expansion (20 min.)
Since many of you are from different academic disciplines, I
would like you informally report what you found about hedging
in academic writing.
This isn’t a traditional expansion
activity, but I had to identify
something students could do within
the same class period.
Asking students to present their
findings emphasizes a competence
besides writing, and it demonstrates
how hedging functions in different
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academic disciplines.
Likewise, asking students to pose
recommendations gets them to
consider how they could hedge
differently in their future academic
writing.
Summary Statement(s): Summarize the global findings that
students observed about hedging in their own writing and
academic disciplines.
This activity also serves as a more
global evaluation of content
comprehension and synthesizes the
individuals student
discussion/evaluation sessions we
engaged in after each of the three
tasks.
Some points that could be made is that
students need to use a greater variety
of hedges, a mark of developing
academic writers and not necessarily
something associated with being an
ELL.
Some students might have also
discovered that their use of hedging
correlates more to hedging in speech
communication rather than their
academic field.
Finally, students might determine
where in an academic research paper
hedges should be used (or not used) as
well as the certainty levels that should
be used in these sections.
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