Abstracts - Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa

KHALID KHALAF ALKHALAF, INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATIONTHE COMPREHENSION OF HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN ACADEMIC TEXTS BYARABIC-SPEAKING EFL STUDENTSUnderstanding to use and interpret the hedging devices seems to pose seriousproblems to advanced level students of English as a second language. As aconsequence, their writing often appears to be dry, overconfident, and lackingeffective argumentation. The problem lies in the fact that students tend to give thesame weight to what is factual and what is not factual. In this study, I haveexamined to what extent advanced EFL Arabic students attend to the presence ofhedges and boosters in an academic text and their understanding of these features.The results of this study have showed that most students were unfamiliar withhedges and boosters, with the exception of modal auxiliary verbs and boosters (factand always) in an academic text. Furthermore, most participants lacked knowledgeof the meanings and the communicative functions of hedges, that is, for whatpurpose they are used and what are the different meanings they convey. Theresults of the present study draw attention to the need for greater emphasis onlexical verbs, modal adjectives, adverbial forms, and modal nouns as alternativeways of expressing the epistemic modality that native speakers of English use.PAPER SESSION 2B - ROOM 2 - MONDAY, 25 JULYISFC38 Book of Abstracts Page 108 Lisbon, July 2011