ASSESSING LEARNING CONTROL OF ENGLISH HEDGES AMONG TERTIARY CANTONESE-SPEAKING EFL STUDENTS
Journal Title: European Journal of Business and Social Sciences - Year 2014, Vol 3, Issue 8
Abstract
This project was designed to try to investigate the difficulties EFL learners would have in learning to use hedging as a rhetorical device in academic writing. The participants were 136 native Cantonese-speaking EFL students who enrolled in the one-year course “English for Academic Purposes†offered by a language centre at a university in Hong Kong. Specifically, this paper aimed: 1) to examine whether there was a significant increase in the number of hedges used in the discussion essays written by students at the beginning of a one-year EAP course (the control group) and at mid-course (the experimental group), and 2) to determine whether, in a specific context, the subjects’ use of hedges was appropriate. The measurements for the first purpose included a ranking of hedges, which was modified from Halliday’s (1994) ranking of modal verbs. The measurements for the second purpose entailed frequency counts of hedging errors.
Authors and Affiliations
SIU, Fiona Kwai Peng| PhD in Applied Linguistics from Macquarie University, The ELC, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Hong Kong
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP10505
- DOI -
- Views 313
- Downloads 12
EFFECTS OF NON-INTEREST INCOME ON THE AVERSION OF SYSTEMIC RISKS OF COMMERCIAL BANKS IN KENYA
Banks operate in an environment of considerate risks and uncertainty. Systemic risk has always been a vicinity of concern not only to bankers but to all in the business world because the risks of a trading partner not...
CORPORATE INCOME TAX AS A DETERMINANT OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE
This paper investigates the impact of corporate tax rate on foreign direct investment inflows from Germany into five Central and Eastern European countries from 2000 to 2012. We used forward-looking or statutory tax r...
THE EFFECT OF AEROBIC EXERCISE ON INTERCELLULAR AND CARDIOVASCULAR ADHESION MOLECULES IN MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN
The coronary deficiency has been identified as one of the major disease of the today’s industrial countries (Mogharnasi et al., 2010). Human being’s health and his disease have always been among the primary concern...
THE NON-LINEAR RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMPLOYEES’ PERFORMANCE AND WORK STRESSORS IN SAUDI BANKS
The objective of the study is to investigate the relationships between employees’ performance, workplace bullying, employees’ health, behavioral variable, and its resulting impact on work stressors under the legit...
ICT ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND SMALL BUSINESS INNOVATION: A MECHANISM FOR SUSTAINABILITY
ICT Entrepreneurship plays a central role in virtually all national socio-economic development agenda in the past decade. Although business scholars seem implicitly to assume that ICT entrepreneurs’ efforts contribu...