The present research is a small-scaled study with only around 800,000 words for each corpus. Larger size of the corpora would result in more representative data, which might be more generalizable to some contexts. The research focus is also only restricted to applied linguistics. A research direction aiming at the investigation into
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other disciplines or areas such as the use of hedging across different proficiency levels of learners from different backgrounds and the use of spoken hedges in lectures, seminars, daily conversations, and student presentations is necessary. Also, it would be interesting to probe into the application of corpus-based materials into the teaching of rhetorical strategies (e.g. hedges, boosters…etc.) in classroom. It might be interesting to understand how some rhetorical strategies are taught to L2 learners. The focus could be on the teaching techniques in class and students’ response and performance toward those teaching techniques. Most importantly, for the further investigations, it might be helpful to examine more on the linguistic differences between languages, for example Chinese and English to notice the gap exist in the languages. While there are studies on the distribution of hedges in academic articles or essays which have been conducted in the past, it is rare that researchers conduct studies to examine the linguistic variations and to explain why certain variations exist across different cultures. Studies on the reasons why certain hedging practice is over- or under-used in one culture or another might benefit instructors and learners in the future. Instructors would have a better idea of how to cope with learners’ problem and learners would have greater sensitivity and awareness of using and not using certain hedges.
Last, to echo the beginning of the present study, the hedging practice is quite a complex linguistic device which requires effort and time by checking from line to line.
For the future studies, with enough time and people, one might consider doing inter-rater evaluations which might lead to results with higher accuracy.
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