The structure of written academic discourse and text has not changed during the past two or three decades despite upheavals and revolutions in writing instruction Johns, 1997.. Each para
Trang 1nated before students are asked to insert punctuation marks (and/or
combine simple sentences whenever possible)
(b) For students at the intermediate level of proficiency, the teacher may need to simplify authentic texts by replacing rare or advanced vo-cabulary items
Retyped (but not copied) news media texts can also be useful for this type
of practice
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1 In addition to cohesive ties and lexical substitutions, in what other
ways can text cohesion be established? Please consider the
follow-ing examples: Which ones are cohesive and which ones are not?
Why is it that some of these short contexts seem to be more
cohe-sive than others?
(a) The end-of-the-year sales are a boon for merchants The
spring merchandise begins to ship in early February
(b) Florida's Apalachicola Bay is one example of pollution
dan-gers In economic terms, water contamination means that
vari-ous sea products are threatened
(c) Only a few thousand people came to the opening night The
players were devastated
(d) This paper will discuss the decline in the importance of the
Constitution and the standards of behavior expected of
gov-ernment officials
(e) Since the end of the WWII, European countries have not been
the same The changes in the mindsets of Europeans following
the war have had a broad effect on their policies
2 From the point of view of rhetorical features, it appears that L2
writing produced by NNSs almost always differs from that
writ-ten by NSs in their LI, English Multiple reasons can exist for
these divergences between the rhetorical characteristics of L2
and LI text Can you identify the most important divergences
and the reasons they exist?
3 In your opinion, what can be the reasons that textbooks for
teach-ing writteach-ing to LI and L2 writers alike emphasize particular features
such as sentence transitions or examples, but not others (e.g.,
cohe-sive ties, lexical substitutions, or complex prepositions)?
4 In academic writing in English, it may be precarious to assume that
the writer and reader share a good deal of common knowledge and
are equally well familiar with certain universal truths Yet to some
degree such an assumption must be made for the writer to produce
practically any piece of writing How can new L2 writers strike a
Trang 2bal-ance between explaining too much and not providing enough in-formation for the reader to understand their text?
5 A number of structures and textual devices are discussed in this chapter Please explain which of these would be the most difficult for teachers to teach or students to learn Why? Are the difficult teaching structures the same as the complex learning structures?
FURTHER READINGS ABOUT RHETORICAL
DEVICES AND COHESION
Biq, Y.-O (1990) Question words as hedges in Chinese In L Bouton & Y Kachru
(Eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning (Vol 1, pp 149-158)
Urbana-Cham-paign: Intensive English Institute.
Carrell, P (1982) Cohesion is not coherence TESOL Quarterly, 16(4), 479-488 Carrell, P (1992) Awareness of text structure: Effects on recall Language learning,
42, 1-20.
Francis, G (1994) Labelling discourse: An aspect of nominal-group cohesion In M.
Coulthard (Ed.), Advances in written text analysis (pp 83-101) New York: Routledge Halliday, M A K., &: Hasan, R (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman Hinkel, E (2001) Matters of cohesion in LI and L2 academic texts Applied Lan-guage learning, 12(2), 111-132.
Kim, H (1990) Continuity of action and topic in discourse In H Hoji (Ed.), Japa-nese and Korean linguistics (pp 79-96) Palo Alto, CA: Center for Study of
Lan-guage and Information.
Master, P (2002) Relative clause reduction in technical research articles In E.
Hinkel & S Fotos (Eds.), New perspectives on grammar teaching second and foreign language classrooms (pp 201-231).Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates McCarthy, M (1994) It, this, and that In M Coulthard (Ed.), Advances in written text analysis (pp 266-275) New York: Routledge.
Ostler, S (1987) English in parallels: A comparison of English and Arabic prose In
U Connor & R Kaplan (Eds.), Writing across languages: Analysis of L2 text (pp.
169-185) Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Scollon, R (1991) Eight legs and one elbow: Stance and structure in Chinese
Eng-lish compositions Proceedings of the 2nd North American Conference on Adult and Ad-olescent Literacy (pp 26-41) Ottawa: International Reading Association.
Tickoo, A (1992) Seeking a pedagogically useful understanding of given-new: An analysis of native speaker errors in written discourse In L Bouton and Y Kachru
(Eds.), Pragmatics and language learning (Vol 3, pp 130-143)
Urbana-Cham-paign: Intensive English Institute.
Wong, H (1990) The use of rhetorical questions in written argumentative
dis-course In L Bouton & Y Kachru (Eds.), Pragmatics and Language Learning (Vol 1,
pp 187-208) Urbana-Champaign: Intensive English Institute.
Trang 3cated academic essay The structure of written academic discourse and text has not changed during the past two or three decades despite upheavals and revolutions in writing instruction (Johns, 1997)
The advantage of a clear and not-too-complex diagram is that it is easy to draw on a chalkboard, white board, or overhead transparency
Academic essays usually include an Introduction, which names and briefly describes the topic The essay must include a Thesis Statement, which specifies how the writer will approach the topic and what support-ing points (1, 2, 3, or more) he or she will use to shore up the thesis The thesis statement serves as an outline for the rest of the essay: The order of the Points made in the thesis statement always determines the order of Thesis Supports (1, 2, 3, or more) A useful analogy that can be made is that the Thesis Statement is the container that holds the entire essay to-gether and in one place
THESIS SUPPORT
Each Point made in the Thesis has to be supported The information to support the Thesis should be divided into Paragraphs, one expanded and
developed idea per paragraph (aka one thought at a time} Each paragraph
should include a Topic Sentence that supports the Thesis Statement and is directly connected to a particular Point in the Thesis Statement, in the or-der of the Points
Trang 4(Thesis Support §,§,§, etc — optional depending on # of points)
Trang 5Similarly, each Topic Sentence also has to be supported by Topic Sup-ports (A, B, C or D, E, F) directly connected to the topic sentence If more than one paragraph is used to support a Thesis Point (1, 2, 3, +), other Topic Sentences in each paragraph also need to be directly relevant to the Thesis Point
All Topic Supports (A, B, C and D, E, F) have to be related to their own Topic Sentence, and all Topic Sentences have to support the Thesis (every Topic Sentence wants to be the Big Kahuna—the Thesis)
When Thesis Point 1 is well supported, the essay moves on to Thesis Point 2
THESIS SUPPORT 2
Thesis Support 2 consists of a number of paragraphs (1-4) Each paragraph includes a Topic Sentence that is directly connected to Point 2 in the Thesis Topic Sentences are supported by Topic Supports (G, H, I and K, L, M) All Topic Supports are directly connected to their own Topic Sentences, which are directly connected to the Thesis Point 2
A useful analogy: In an organization or business, employees in a depart-ment (or unit) have their direct boss, who is actually a small boss The small boss, together with several other small bosses, has a medium-size boss Sev-eral medium-size bosses report to an upper medium-size boss, and sevSev-eral upper medium bosses report to the Big Boss, the Kahuna (aka the Thesis Statement)
When Thesis Point 2 is well supported, the essay moves on to Thesis Point
3 When Thesis Point 3 is supported, on to Thesis Point 4, and so on
In academic essays, a proper Conclusion is not always possible to make simply because many academic assignments and papers are written about issues that do not have conclusions However, conclusion making is not re-quired, but a Closing Paragraph is To close an essay, it is also not necessary
to repeat the Thesis Points (as students often do) A closing paragraph can look forward into the future and, for example, note possible developments, events, or steps than can be taken with regard to the essay topic or issue Other types of Closing Paragraphs can include the writer's personal hopes/views/expectations that deal with the topic or simply a couple of summative sentences
A practical exercise can be to ask students to underline the Thesis State-ment in their assignState-ment/essay and then underline the Topic Sentence in each paragraph and connect it to a specific Thesis Ibint, one at a time
Trang 612 Hedging in Academic Text in English
OVERVIEW
• The role and importance of hedges in academic text
• Helping learners expand their hedging repertoire
• Various types of hedges such as frequency adverbs, possibility
hedges, modal verbs, and adjective/adverb hedges
• Developing stock vocabulary and hedges
• Overstatements and learning to avoid them
In the past several decades, much research has been devoted to hedging in academic prose, among other types of discourse (e.g., Channell, 1994; Hinkel, 1997b; Holmes, 1984; Huebler, 1983; Hyland, 1998; Kay, 1997; Pagano, 1994) Analyses of large English-language corpora continue to un-derscore the importance and prevalence of various types of hedging devices
in academic prose (Biber, 1988; Biber et al., 1999; Hoye, 1997)
According to Hyland (1998), the purpose of hedging is to reduce the writer's commitment to the truthfulness of a statement In addition, hedg-ing represents the use of lhedg-inguistic devices to show hesitation or uncertainty, display politeness and indirectness, and defer to the reader's point of view (Hinkel, 1996a, 1997b) In academic prose, hedging has numerous social and rhetorical purposes, and it can take many linguistic forms, including adverbs, adjectives, modal and mental/emotive verbs, and conjunctions In linguistic research, various definitions and classifications of hedging de-vices have been constructed to account for their complex and frequently culturally bound contextual uses
Trang 7The uses of hedges are highly conventionalized in academic
writ-ing and practically requisite in expressions of personal positions or
points of view
Based on his corpus analysis of published academic prose, Hyland (1998) confirmed that "hedges were by far the most frequent features of writer perspective" (p 106) and stated that, in academic writing, this find-ing reflects the critical importance of distfind-inguishfind-ing fact from opinion and rhetorical persuasion
However, in composition textbooks and writing guides for basic
writ-ers, hedges, often called limiting modifiers (Hacker, 1994; Lunsford &
Connors, 1997), are not discussed in detail Despite the prevalence and importance of hedges in written academic prose, textbooks for teaching ESL and EAP writing rarely focus on hedges of any kind with the excep-tion of modal verbs (Hyland, 1998) One notable excepexcep-tion is the work of Jordan (1997), who pointed out that hedging in academic writing in busi-ness, economics, medical sciences is not just desirable, but requisite He emphasized that hedging is a "vitally important" (p 241) skill in L2 aca-demic writing and suggested various teaching techniques for giving stu-dents practice in the uses of hedges Similarly, other researchers have noted that L2 learners need to gain an understanding of how hedging the extent of one's claims and certainty reflects the politeness of the aca-demic genre because NNS writers need to correctly interpret the polite-ness strategies employed by other writers as well as produce appropriate text and language (Channell, 1994)
However, several studies have found that L2 academic text frequently contains overstatements, exaggerations, and forceful persuasion (Hinkel, 1997b, 2002a) In general terms, although there may be a variety of rea-sons for the impressions of overstatement and inflation projected in NNS texts, one important consideration may have to do with the fact that rhe-torical uncertainty and the employment of hedges is valued greatly in the Anglo-American, but not necessarily in other, rhetorical traditions (Oliver, 1972; Sa'adeddin, 1989) Furthermore, research has shown that NNS writ-ers have a restricted lexical repertoire that often leads to a shortage of hedging devices employed in L2 written text (Hinkel, 2003a; Hyland, 2002a) Therefore, focused instruction in appropriate uses of varied hedg-ing is urgently needed
The discussion of various types of hedging devices presented in this chapter is organized to begin with the lexically and syntactically simple de-vices and proceed to those of greater complexity (For additional informa-tion about the hedging properties of condiinforma-tional, concessive, and time
[when] clauses, see chap 10; the passive voice as hedging, see chap 7; and
indefinite pronouns as hedges, chap 6.)
Trang 8WHY HEDGING NEEDS TO BE TAUGHT
Because in various non-Anglo-American rhetorical traditions, rhetorical persuasion does not necessarily call for hedging, the desirability of hedging statements, generalizations, and claims is not an obvious consideration for many NNS writers Therefore, the need for hedging in academic prose has
to be explicitly addressed Noting the distinctions in uses of hedges in infor-mal conversational and forinfor-mal written discourse is a good place to start
For example, in casual conversations, English speakers often say, I always
forget to xxx!, You always doyyy!, or Everything is falling apart today Speakers of
other languages say these things, too, in both English and their native lan-guages However, in all languages, informal conversations with friends re-quire a different type of discourse and language features than, for instance, writing a petition to the dean In fact, if someone talks to his or her friends and uses language features similar to those found in the petition, within a short time this individual would not have many friends left So, the lan-guage features employed in formal academic writing are almost always sub-stantially and markedly different from those used in conversations
In many discourse traditions, overstatements and exaggerations can be
so common that practically no one notices them Also in English some conversational exaggerations are not likely to get much attention (e.g., 7
have a thousand things to do today or Every time I get in the shower, the phone rings) On the other hand, in formal writing, these sentences may become,
/ am busy today or The phone often rings when I am in the shower Such
exagger-ations are usually assumed to be innocent hyperboles that are used to make a point, and both speakers and hearers are aware that the actual state
of affairs is inflated In contrast, the information in formal written dis-course is expected to be far more precise and cautiously hedged, and in various types of formal prose, such as professional correspondence, memos, or reports, exaggerations and overstatements can be precarious and appear to be irresponsible and untruthful
With conversational hyperboles, the speaker's and the hearer's shared and mutual assumptions apply to overstatements and exaggerations, allow-ing them to understand the intended meanallow-ing Furthermore, apart from such shared and mutual assumptions that exist in the Anglo-American dis-course tradition, there is little objective reason to believe that these assump-tions should only apply to casual conversaassump-tions, but not formal written prose It may not be difficult to imagine that in non-Anglo-American rhe-torical traditions, hyperboles can be a perfectly acceptable persuasion
Trang 9de-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-tically accessible types of hedges, such as adverbs of frequency (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 be supposed to) A prevalence of such hedges
can make a piece of writing appear conversational and
inappropri-ate in tone
Trang 10In addition, overstatements and exaggerations are identified not only by
absence of hedging, as noted earlier, but also explicit markers such as com-pletely, extremely, strongly, and totally Conversational hedges and
exag-geratives are also dealt with in this chapter
ADVERBS OF FREQUENCY AND POSSIBILITY HEDGES
With the exception of always and never, which mark the extremes of the
fre-quency continuum, frefre-quency adverbs such as frequently, often, usually, and
occasionally represent one of the most common and simple hedging
de-vices In fact because these adverbs are lexically and syntactically simple, they can be accessible to most L2 learners, from those with intermediate to advanced L2 proficiency In addition, due to their ubiquity, frequency ad-verbs can be employed to hedge the meanings of ad-verbs or whole sentences and can be easier to use in editing than other more complex types of
hedges For instance, sometimes, often, usually, and generally are more com-mon in academic prose than, for example, ever or never, which are
particu-larly rare (Biber et al., 1999)
Although frequency adverbs can be definite (e.g., hourly, daily, weekly, monthly], the indefinite frequency adverbs have the function of hedges when
used in appropriate contexts These include (in the order of declining fre-quency rates in academic text):
• frequently, often
• generally/in general, usually, ordinarily
• occasionally/on occasion, sometimes, at times, from time to time, every so often
• most of the time, on many/numerous occasions ,
• almost never, rarely, seldom, hardly ever (negative meanings)
• almost/nearly always, invariably
Adverb phrases of frequency such as on many occasions or at times can be
placed at the beginnings of sentences or at the ends of short sentences For example, a student's sentence,
Cracks propagate when loads are applied to structural components,
can be relatively easy to hedge by means of adverbial phrases of fre-quency depending on the intended meaning: