THE COMPARISON OF HEDGING IN THE INTRODUCTION SECTION OF THE JOURNAL ARTICLES IN ASIAN EFL JOURNAL VOLUME 64 AND TEFLIN JOURNAL VOLUME 23 NO 1

Ulum, Miftakhul. 2013. The Comparison of Hedging in the Introduction Section of the Journal Articles in Asian EFL Journal Volume 64 and TEFLIN Journal Volume 23 No 1. Skripsi: English Education Department, Teacher Training and Education Faculty, Muria Kudus University. Advisors: (1) Fitri Budi Suryani, S.S, M.Pd, (2) Diah Kurniati, S.Pd, M.Pd Keywords: Hedges, Academic Writing, Type of Hedges There are four skills in mastering English. In academic writing, we must have an ability to deliver information or opinion well so that the readers understand about our meaning. Hedges are basic feature of scientific communication and academic writing of which can help a writer to appropriately express his scientific claims. There are seven expressions that represent the hedging in scientific English stated by Salager-Meyer. They are modal auxiliary verb, modal lexical verb, approximately degree quantity and time, adjective, adverb and noun, introductory phrase, if clause and compound hedges. Hedges are very important role in academic writing since it is necessary to make decision about our stance on particular subject, or the strength of claim we are making. Hedging devices usually find in skripsi, essay, journal etc. Journal is included as academic writing that has objective to inform than entertain. So, hedges have important role in making journal article. The objective of this research is to know how Asian EFL Journal volume 64 differs from and resembles TEFLIN Journal volume 23 no 1 in the term of hedges used in the introduction section does. The design of this research is qualitative research and uses comparison study analysis as the form of qualitative data analysis. The data of this research are words, phrases or clauses of hedges found in the Introduction Section of journal article in Asian EFL Journal volume 64 and TEFLIN Journal Volume 23 No 1. The data sources of this research are six articles from Asian EFL Journal volume 64 and six articles from TEFLIN Journal Volume 23 No 1. The data sources are collected by downloading from the site: http://asian-efl-journal.com and http://journal.teflin.org. The result of this research shows: (a) there are 6 expressions of the types of hedges in the Introduction Section of journal article in Asian EFL Journal volume 64. They are modal auxiliary verbs (43%), modal lexical verbs (10%), approximates of degree, quantity; frequency; and time (32%), introductory phrases (10%), if clauses (2%), and compound hedges (3%), and (b) there are 7 expressions of the types of hedges in the Introduction Section of journal article in TEFLIN Journal Volume 23 no 1. They are modal auxiliary verbs (29%), modal lexical verbs (20%), adjectival, adverbial, and nominal modal phrases (7%), approximates of degree, quantity; frequency; and time (22%), introductory phrases (13%), if clauses (6%), and compound hedges (3%). Furthermore, (c) after doing the comparison, the writer can sum up that the researchers who used English as first/second language usually have stronger claims than the researchers who used English as foreign language. It is because by using hedges devices they convey their claims with ideas of doubt or possibility and hedging not used to talk about things that definitely exist or events that definitely happened. The writer considers that hedges are very important in academic writing. Hopefully, English lecturers can teach their students how to identify and use hedges devices effectively and properly in academic writing, such as skripsi, essay, journal, etc