A study of the english quantifiers as hedges used in theses by MA students of english at the university of languages and international studies, vietnam national university, hanoi

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ************** NGƠ THỊ HỊA A STUDY OF THE ENGLISH QUANTIFIERS AS HEDGES USED IN THESES BY MA STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI (Nghiên cứu lượng từ tiếng Anh dùng phương tiện rào đón(che chắn) luận văn học viên cao học tiếng Anh trường Đại Học Ngoại Ngữ, Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 02 01 Hanoi- 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ************** NGƠ THỊ HỊA A STUDY OF THE ENGLISH QUANTIFIERS AS HEDGES USED IN THESES BY MA STUDENTS OF ENGLISH AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES, VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI (Nghiên cứu lượng từ tiếng Anh dùng phương tiện rào đón(che chắn) luận văn học viên cao học tiếng Anh trường Đại Học Ngoại Ngữ, Đại Học Quốc Gia Hà Nội) M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 02 01 Supervisor: ĐỖ THỊ THANH HÀ, Ph.D Hanoi- 2014 DECLARATION I hereby certify the thesis entitled “A study of the English quantifiers as hedges used in theses by MA students of English at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi” is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi The contents of this thesis have not been published anywhere for any purposes I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library can be accessible for the purposes of study The work was carried out under my supervisor, Do Thi Thanh Ha Ph.D, at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Hanoi, September 2014 Student’s signature Ngơ Thị Hịa i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First of all, I would like to express my special thank to my supervisor, Do Thi Thanh Ha, Ph.D for her enthusiastic guidance as well as her helpful comments and suggestions during the research process I wish to send my deep gratitude to Ngo Huu Hoang, Ph.D for his inspiration to this research topic I also wish to express my sincere thank to the librarians who helped me a lot in trying to suggest and encourage me to go on when I got in troubles for data collection Last but not least, my heart-felt thanks are sent to my family, my uncle, my best friends and classmates those who always supported and encouraged me to complete this thesis ii ABSTRACT This study investigates how English quantifiers are used as hedges in theses by MA students of English at the University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National University, Hanoi It explores intercultural characteristics of Vietnamese minds influencing on their written English The samples for the study are 10 MA English theses of the ULIS All of them have been published from the last five years to make sure of the update This study not only mentiones to the uses of quantifiers in English theses but sheds light on their roles as hedging devices in academic writing The purpose of this study is to find out the frequencies of using quantifiers in MA theses as well as to investigate the pragmatic meanings of quantifiers used as hedges in these theses This study is a quantitative and qualitative research It is based on the corpus combined with observation, description and discussion in the light of pragmatics The study helps to know how MA Vietnamese students use quantifiers in written English, especially in theses iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv PART A: INTRODUCTION .1 Rationales Significances of the study Aims of the study and Research Questions Scope of the study Organization of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND Academic Discourse Hedging in Academic Discourses 2.1 Definitions of hedging 2.2 Functions of hedging 2.3 Overview of hedging in second language writings Quantifiers 3.1 Definitions of quantifiers 3.2 Classification of quantifiers 10 3.3 Functions of quantifiers 10 3.4 Quantifiers in terms of pragmatics 10 CHAPTER 2: The Study 13 2.1 Corpus 13 2.2 Procedure .13 2.3 Methodology 13 2.4 Data analysis and Discussions .18 PART C: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 42 A summary of the findings 42 iv Limitations of the study 42 Suggestions for further studies 43 REFERENCES 44 v PART A: INTRODUCTION This initial chapter will introduce the rationales, the aims and the research questions, together with the scope of the study More importantly, this is also the chapter giving the clearest guideline for the whole research Rationales of the study Academic writing recently plays an important role in higher education and it also has become a requirement or an assessment of the students’ knowledge through essays, studies, or dissertations In order to get language proficiency in writing, students have to learn and practise a lot However, because of being non-native writers, they have many difficulties in gaining the qualities of an academic writing such as formality, caution, succinctness Besides, it can be explained that their ways of thinking in Vietnamese have somehow influences on their English writings As Dr Ngo Huu Hoang mentioned in Journal of Science and technology (2014:67), Vietnamese culture prefers subtle,discreet and emotional ways of speaking and always appreciates the balance of the relationships In other words, Vietnamese people often try to avoid conflicts in conversation Vietnameses often say “Miếng trầu đầu câu chuyện” It means that to start a conversation they tend not to go straight to the point but have a roundabout way of saying something before The purpose is mainly to lead to topic of conversation sensitively In writing, saying something in a roundabout way may be the reason for redundancy but in some ways it becomes an effective strategy to express their cautions in giving information without causing strong disagreements from the readers In English, it is so-called hedging Hedging is one of the prominent features in academic writing which appreciates the concept of cautious language Especially, to research issues, every information needs to be given persuasively and clearly However, not at all time writers can make sure of something absolutely because in fact everything changes constantly Therefore, to get both caution in language and reality of the problems, people use quantifiers in their language For example, in “There are ten good students in class, the researchers may also replace it by using quantifiers which are suitable with their meanings as follows: There are many good students in class (a) There are a few good students in class (b) There are some good students in class.(c) The sentence (a) can be explained that researcher considers the number “ten” as a large number in comparison with the class But when using quantifier “a few” in the sentence (b), “ten” may be referred to a smaller number of good students while“some” in the sentence (c) can be considered medium quantity The questions are raised that why and how they use these quantifiers instead of exact numbers and how Vietnamese culture relects on their writings This study exams the uses of quantifiers as hedges in theses through investigating the frequencies of using specific quantifiers Moreover, it emphasizes pragmatic meanings in using quantifiers as hedges in MA theses at ULIS The research result will contribute to develop the learners’ writing ability by using quantifiers for effective academic writing Significances of the study The result of the study may  enhance students’ awareness of the importance of using quantifiers as hedging devices in academic writing  help students expand their lexical repertoire by understanding deliberately how quantifiers are used in academic writing  find out in what ways Vietnamese ways of thinking have influences on English academic writings Aims of the study and Research Questions The study is aimed 3.1 To identify the strategies and purposes of using quantifiers in written languages 3.2 To identify pragmatic meanings of using quantifiers as hedges in MA theses Research Questions This study aims to answer the following research questions: What are frequencies of using quantifiers in the Introductions and Discussions of English MA theses at ULIS? What are the uses of quantifiers as hedges in MA theses at ULIS? Scope of the study The study only focuses on using quantifiers as hedges in formal written discourse, not in other written or conversational registers It is analyzed in terms of pragmatics Data analysis concentrates on Introduction and Discussion sections of the MA theses Organization of the study This thesis composes of three parts Part A, Introduction, presents the rationales, significances, aims, scope, and organization of the study Part B, Development, consists of the following chapters  Chapter one, Theoretical background, presents the concepts relevant to the study such as definitions of hedging and quantifiers, hedging in the second language writings, hedging in terms of pragmatics, etc  Chapter two, The Study, is done to know how to choose samples, how to collect and analyze data It also discusses the findings of the study to find out the frequencies of using quantifiers in the theses and to make some in-depth discussions Part C, Conclusions and Implications, addresses the key issues in the study, summarizing some limitations revealed during the process of conducting this research paper ability to perform the action (he could in 8, they could in 45, a real princess could in 48, it can in 52) (text 3) (53) As can be seen in the document analysis and questionnaire, there were no separate sections for these parts, and there were few exercises for practice, either Therefore, exercises should be designed more difficultly to bring students opportunity practice at home and in the classroom (54) At a glance, one may assume that whether the translator decides to transfer or to convert, it is of little importance (55) Consequently, students did not have many chances to work with the teachers as well as their partners In addition to this, the interviewed teachers also admitted that their high-technology skill was limited They had many difficulties in solving technical problem during their teaching while it is not easy to get the help of the technician at university (text 10) (56) The 55th clause complex is used to express the President‟s belief in the US‟ strength despite many difficulties from the Revolution War until the Great Depression (TEXT 9) (57) It‟s likely to mean that the students were aware of their weakness in making sentences, so they wanted to have more practice of this kind Playing games received many participants as the students found it interesting to create an enjoyable atmosphere in their classroom This could motivate their interest of learning a lot, especially, when medical English was sometimes consider rather boring and to cause much pressure to many of them during a long lesson (TEXT 4) (58) Usually environmentalists are more familiar with these terms while general readers find them a little bit difficult Therefore, a functional-descriptive term is, sometimes, added in case readers might not be able to understand the transferred eponyms (TEXT 7) (59) Although, the performance of males in classroom is not as good as females‟ (they are often lazy and not focus much on the lessons), males learners satisfy with their achievement in English (TEXT 8) (60) They come up with an explanation that the Vietnamese term is often used when the reader has little knowledge of the specialized field while the loan word is more preferable to those who have some knowledge of the field and professionals, stating 31 that the loan word best conveys the meaning of the concept and the use of loan words sounds smart and high-class (TEXT 7) (61) Strategies: Choosing which of the two terms depends on the readership: those who have some knowledge of the field and professionals prefer the loan word while readers who have little knowledge of the specialized field prefer the Vietnamese one (TEXT 7) (62) There has been only a little increase in the number of the correct answers to the two questions concerning these strategies (TEXT 6) (63) In the tests, with the text about “Niagara Falls”, the students had little content schemata, so they could not make as many predictions as with the text “Rain Forests and the Earth‟s Climate” (TEXT 6) (64) Students took great painful in the misuse of vocabulary learning and achieve little in the long run What was worse, this awkward “copy method” might make students dislike English lessons (TEXT 4) (65) Furthermore, one idea added by some students is that they find it hard because they have little time to practice in class (text 1) (66) As can be seen in the document analysis and questionnaire, there were no separate sections for these parts, and there were few exercises for practice, either Therefore, exercises should be designed more difficultly to bring students opportunity practice at home and in the classroom (TEXT 10) (67) When being asked to pick out the way students wanted to be corrected with (a) Immediately, in front of everyone, (b) Later at the end of the activity, in front of everyone, (c) Later, in private, and (d) Other opinion; students‟ most preferred choice was (a), which meant they liked to be corrected immediately, in front of everyone 41.2% for (a), 35.9% for (b) and 22.9% for (c) Nobody gave any other opinion and very few of them were fond of being corrected later, in private (TEXT 8) (68) Comparing students‟ actual use of predicting strategies with their awareness of this strategy, the researcher found that fewer students actually use these strategies, but the rank of predicting strategies perceived to be used by the students is nearly the same as those reported to be aware of (TEXT 6) 32 (69) However, a few students complained that the predicting strategy-reading the first sentence of a paragraph to predict its main idea was not useful because it only worked with a paragraph, the first sentence of which was also the topic sentence (TEXT 6) (70) A few students stated that reading for main idea was useless because they could predict the main idea when they looked at the title and the picture (TEXT 6) (71) In view of the latter, the teacher saw that the students only made a few lines because of their lack of knowledge of the topic as well as the structure and the relevant vocabulary (TEXT 6) (72) In term of reviewing strategy, the figure indicates that fewer students knew the importance of revision and reviewed the newly learned words actively, only % of the students reviewed new words often (TEXT 4) (73) There are very few modal elements used in the text Only clauses contain modality Two of them express the princess‟s obligation to perform the actions (she has to in 2, the princess had to in 35) other express the writer‟s judgment about the character‟s ability to perform the action (he could in 8, they could in 45, a real princess could in 48, it can in 52) (TEXT 3) (74) According to Halliday (1994), there are four main types of grammatical cohesive devices: reference, ellipsis, substitution, and conjunction It should be noted here that there are very few ellipses and substitution in the text (TEXT 3) (75) There are very few modal elements used in the text (can and could to show ability, has to and had to to show obligation) (TEXT 3) Narrowers (76) Nobody gave any other opinion and very few of them were fond of being corrected later, in private (77) Many of them come from the rural areas where there are no favorable English learning conditions The others come from the towns and cities and have better chances for learning English (Text 1) Quantifiers combined with of indicate Narrowers; in other word, it shows a part of the total This combination may be one way to avoid showing the truth-value Enough is normally placed before noun to show quantity required or necessary Sometimes it can stand alone or after adjectives The purpose of using enough in most of the cases is 33 to weigh the information and to express modest in it In (17) and (18) by narrowing from the large to the small the author’s purpose seems to weight feedback (17) and the use of loan word (18) (78) Unsurprisingly, 67% of the students agreed that this multimedia courseware provided feed back immediately after a response, and 59% of them found that the feed back is enough and appropriate (Text 10) (79) Although the use of loan word has gained much popularity and preference in the translation of environmental terms, this strategy, naturally enough, has both advantages and disadvantages (Text 7) (80) He made several domestic policies during his first term in office including signing the economic stimulus legislation in response to the 2007–2009 recession in the United States (TEXT 9) (81) The 14th item in the questionnaire aimed at finding out the way by which students liked to learn vocabulary The options mentioned were: (a) by listening to and repeating them, (b) by seeing them, (c) by writing words several times, (d) by using new words in sentences, and (e) by thinking of the relationships between known and new (TEXT 8) (82) While male students preferred the style of learning new words by thinking of relationship between known and new (3.62 point) then writing (3.5 point), female students thought that leaning by writing words several times (3.7 point) was the most effective way, after that here came the method of using words in sentences (3.58 point) (TEXT 8) (83) In conclusion, in terms of new words learning, although there were some different between males and females at age, most of the students highly appreciated the style of writing words several times with 3.6 point Unfortunately, teachers were unaware of this fact They thought that their students enjoyed learning by thinking of the relationship between known and new (TEXT 8) (84) We can also see that students aged 18-19 highly appreciated the style of learning by writing words down several times, especially females with 4.14 point (TEXT 8) 34 (85) Since the transposition procedure involves several types, the investigation on the translation of this kind of nominal group in environmental texts according to specific realization of this translation procedure should be presented (TEXT 7) (86) To unpack the meaning of the SL term, sometimes the translator needs to paraphrase the SL term using either related or unrelated words to specify its propositional meaning in the TL In other words, a SL term is translated by a TL phrase, clause, sentence or even several sentences (TEXT 7) (87) Several possible factors may have contributed to this improvement in the students‟ reading comprehension (TEXT 6) Move 2:Evaluating the congruence of their findings with regard to other criteria In this move, the writers make a comparison between findings of the present research and that of the other research (88) Moreover, there was a little bit difference between people varying in age As we can see from the seventh graph, 18-19 year-old students thought that learning in pairs was not interesting, they expressed neutral feeling However, the older they were, the more they liked it Students at bigger age (24-26) valued the point 3.71 for learning in pairs, equally for both males and females Learning in small groups was preferred by students at all age, they marked this mode at 3.86 for lowest and 4.14 for highest (text 8) (89) Second, as stated in the previous chapter, sub-technical terms are words which are not specific to a subject or a specialized field but are regularly seen in many other fields of life (text 7) (90) Nominalization – this feature is considered by many scholars of legal language as one of the most prominent features (text 5) As shown in (12), appearance of a little contributes to modify the writer’s attitude toward research result in a positive way in comparison with the various age element In (13), the author shows their views but doesn’t state exactly quantity of how many fields of life This uncertain way may protect the author from potential attacks In (14), the author assumes that everyone shares the same topic “nominalization” 35 Move 3: Offering an interpretation for their findings Weakeners (91) When being asked the question, both the teachers agreed that the second-year students at TMC are of different level of English competence and time for students to practice vocabulary taught in “English course for nursing students” in particular and other skills in general is not enough (TEXT 4) (92) Discussing with the new words was chosen by the least is perhaps due to the fact that when students have not acquired vocabulary store to talk, they were not self-confident enough or even very difficult to practice in this task (TEXT 4) In (22) and (23), by using quantifier enough in the negative sentences, the author show the weightness of information (93) Also, when a new foreign term has not been used widely with enough popularity and familiarity, it becomes extremely difficult for readers, especially for those who are not good at English (Text 7) (94) According to Halliday (1994), there are four main types of grammatical cohesive devices: reference, ellipsis, substitution, and conjunction It should be noted here that there are very few ellipses and substitution in the text (text 3) (95) These percentages from question 1, and indicated that the students could learn with the software with little help or guide from the teachers (text 10) Broadeners (96) The answers for the first and the second question show that all of the students have been learning English for at least years; and they have paid much attention to English.(text 8) Narrowers (97) The habit of checking new words whenever they come across them in passage kills all interest, motivation and even interferes with comprehension, the students only concentrate on individual words and ignore the context which helps create the meaning of word I would say that many of them see vocabulary as merely committing new words to memory the help of the bilingual word list and by rote learning, and they tend to face great difficulties in associating the meanings of the target words with their form and sound (text 4) 36 (98) Item 23 and 24 focused on statements about feedback being enough consistent, related to correct answers, whether the students knew their marks and whether the marks were recorded (Text 10) (99) As can be seen from the two examples above, (a1) is nominalized language which is condensed Example (a2) is the rewritten in its congruent form and it is clear that if the processes were not nominalized, the clause would be realized by several clauses These congruent expressions usually cover a large space and seem to be clumsy (TEXT 5) (100) As presented in the graph, the style by which students preferred using to learn new words was learning by writing words several times (TEXT 8) One common thing is that the authors draw their own views from the findings Appearance of quantifiers (few, little, much, many,etc.) refers to quantity which they have in mind These interpretation express their caution to avoid potential disagreement from the readers Enough in (29) seems less considerate because it is more specific in the way of interpretation but it may be easy to deal with possible readers’attack of wondering how is enough Move 4: Warding off counterclaims This part is a chance for the writers to admit their limitations The combination of the categories (strengtheners, broadeners, weakeners, or narrowers) is various in each situation The realization of limitation in research helps to protect the writers from possible attacks (103) More seriously, teachers often have to simply their performance and another interesting activity due to limited facility All interviewed teachers and students wished to have enough teaching and learning equipments such as good quality tapes, pictures, flash cards and spare posters available in the school library or school laboratory (Text 4) (104) However, the weakness of the courseware was the lack of interactive activities among students Besides, students had to repeat sentences too many times and they felt uninterested in the similar sections during the course.(text 10) (105) Moreover, the weaknesses of the courseware could also be found in the role of teachers The teachers have difficulties in controlling class and access to students as well as the content of this software is quite easy So it took them a little time to finish the units with high scores They paid more attention on chatting and playing games on the computers (TEXT 10) 37 (106) The teachers had to stand by the server computer and had students follow the instructions and then with the help of the support net software to control student‟s learning Consequently, students did not have many chances to work with the teachers as well as their partners In addition to this, the interviewed teachers also admitted that their high-technology skill was limited They had many difficulties in solving technical problem during their teaching while it is not easy to get the help of the technician at university (TEXT 10) (107) It is seen that the case of zero linking device is most prevalent in the translation of relative clauses in environmental texts Sometimes, a comma appears to separate the ideas expressed by the relative clause but in many other cases, this punctuation mark seems unimportant; the relative clause in English is now recognized as a verb phrase, adjective phrase or noun modifier.(text 7) (108) However, in translation, the loan word is usually used without its explanation and its functional-descriptive equivalent because they contain many other terms, hence, are cumbersome and complex.(text 7) (109) Although the use of loan word has gained much popularity and preference in the translation of environmental terms, this strategy, naturally enough, has both advantages and disadvantages.(text 7) (110) Also, when a new foreign term has not been used widely with enough popularity and familiarity, it becomes extremely difficult for readers, especially for those who are not good at English (text 7) (111) However, a few students complained that the predicting strategy-reading the first sentence of a paragraph to predict its main idea was not useful because it only worked with a paragraph, the first sentence of which was also the topic sentence (text 6) (112) In view of the latter, the teacher saw that the students only made a few lines because of their lack of knowledge of the topic as well as the structure and the relevant vocabulary (text 6) (113) Due to this misconception, the students seemed to underestimate the reading tasks, and they tended to use the top-down reading process; they over-relied on their prior predictions, and in many cases their failure to monitor predictions inhibited their comprehension (text 6) 38 (114) However, it is the fact that although the students have learnt English for several years, along with their difficulties in acquiring any effective language skills at university, their cultural background knowledge is very still poor (Text 1) (115) On the one hand, the teacher shared many of these ideas with the students On the other hand they claimed that the most important thing that needed changing was the time (TEXT 6) Move 5: Stating implications for research, theory, or social practice This part allows for future investigation to fill in any deficiency or limitation of the research However, this move is not really popular in chosen MA theses It can be explained that the purpose of this move in Discussion is similar to that in Conclusion sections (116) This source of reference can be quite useful and necessary for readers, especially for those who have little knowledge of these concepts.(text 7) To sum up Discussion Many Much Few Little Enough Several Total Strengtheners 13 0 0 17 Broadeners 28 21 0 0 49 Narrowers 11 18 Weakeners 16 10 36 Total 39 26 17 10 11 Introduction Many Much Few Little Enough Several Total Strengtheners 2 0 0 Broadeners 0 0 Narrowers 0 0 Weakeners 0 Total 10 4 39 As can be seen from these tables, the authors tend to use quantifiers as broaders with the biggest numbers The difference between using quantifiers in Introduction and Discussion is that people use in the way of narrowers in the Discussion more than those in the introduction While strengtheners are less used in the Discussion than that in the other The purpose here may be in order to protecting the author from the possible attacks of the target group in terms of the features of each section Generally, the discussion sections use quantifiers more variously than that in the Introductions Also, the purpose of this section is mainly to protect the authors from possible attacks The authors use quite a lot quantifiers in their researches It can be explained that while Western people say everything specifically and briefly, Vietnameses have tendency of gerneralizations and symbolization In the context of Vietnamese culture, Vietnamese language expresses the basic features of Vietnamese’soul It highly appreciates the symbolic features Tran Ngoc Them (2012) stated that Vietnamese people often use quantifiers to show that features Look inside this research results, people like using quantifiers to express their views The feature of Introduction and Discussion are different in terms of theory If language use in the Introduction according to moves pays attention to how to lead in the research topic, in the Discussion people use language for the purpose of presenting different arguments based on evidence to reach the research results As I can see, the first language has much influence on writers’ writings not only in Introduction section but also in Discussion section It can be easily seen that the authors use quantifiers (many, much, several, few, little, enough) in the Discussions However, these quantifiers show common things or not clear enoungh.Discussion section requires presenting the arguments in the clear and coherent way Notwithstanding that the authors always try to avoid strong arguments or state exact numbers to protect them from conflicts According to Tran Ngoc Them (2012), Vietnamese language is a symbolic language which generalize everything Vietnameses prefer using numbers or quantifiers with the symbolic meaning For example, Yêu tam tứ núi trèo Ba chìm bảy Ba mặt lời 40 It is symbolic language that Vietnamese writers often use in their writings They have tendency of using quantifiers as hedges but that hedging may not persuasive enough because of their generalizations In the light of Grice’s maxims, the writers has violated these cooperative principles Quantity They often go indirectly to the problems because of the daily communicative habits Therefore, their sentence structures sometimes become redundant Quality: Because they are afraid that they give decision too absolutely, they use a lot of quantifiers (many, much, several) to imitigate their statements, or to make them more general Their purpose may be in order to hide their responsibility for the truth-value or to keep them safe from disagreements of readers Relation: Hedging can lead them get lost of the topic Manner: They cannot advoid ambiguity or unclear expression 41 PART C: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS This chapter includes a brief summary of the findings and some limitations of the study as well as some suggestions for further studies on related issues A summary of the findings Basing on collected data, it can be found that quantifiers as hedges have much influences on pragmatic meanings Their uses are suitable with the hedging functions, that is, modifying the weightness of the information, modifying the attitude of the writer to the propositions, protecting the authors from the possible attacks, hiding the truth values of what is being said The first research question concentrates on frequencies of using quantifiers as a total and in each part (introduction, discussion) I found that the majority of MA students use many and much in the theses The other quantifiers are less used With research question 2, I go deeply into pragmatic meanings of the uses of quantifiers on the basis of hedging functions and hedging forms The analysis only pay attention to Introduction and Discussion sections and it follows the moves of these two sections In the Introductions, the authors tend to use quantifiers as hedges by broadening statements for the purpose of assessing the information weightness The results show that the writers consciously or unconsciously always consider politeness in their writings because the writing tendency focuses on common sharings between the writers and the readers/peer researchers In the Discussions, I only highlight special cases in using quantifiers For example, large quantifiers are used to imply small quantity, or one quantifier can be used in many contexts to show the same purpose While the writers’ main purpose of using quantifiers as hedges in the Introductions is to show solidary relationships or to appear modest , the purpose in the Discussion mainly is to protect the writers from potential attacks It is because in the Discussion, they must give out their own views or comments on the research results, so they may easily risk a conflict or disagreement Limitations of the study Although the study was conducted carefully and seriously and it has achieved the final objectives, there still exists some unavoidable limitations in this paper Firstly, this study is relatively small scale one with the involvement of 10 theses This may be a barrier which prevents the researcher from getting more precious findings related to this study 42 Secondly, this research only focuses on quantifiers classification of Quirk (1973) The other quantifiers such as all, some, any and phrasal quantifiers such as a lot of, a number of are not concerned Therefore, the research results are not rich enough Because of time limitation, the research couldn’t make some comparisons between this research findings and that in the others Some suggestions for strategies or tactics in using quantifiers as hedges in academic writings; therefore, couldn’t carried out to apply in teaching Last but not least, under personal situation the researcher has many difficulties in accessing data sources because theses are strickly stored in the library Suggestions for further studies In the light of a minor thesis, it could not cover all aspects relating to the topic; therefore, some suggestions are recomended for futher studies Firstly, next studies can be conducted with a broader target population in order to get larger and more real data For example, it can be investigated into other quantifiers Besides, further studies can focus on comparing and contrasting between second language writings and native English writings Analysing politeness strategies in using quantifiers as hedges is an interesting way that I haven’t gone deeply insight 43 REFERENCES Ngô Hữu Hồng, 2014 Lời rào đón phương tiện “đền bù” vi phạm nguyên tắc lịch Khoa học công nghệ, 65-71 Trần Ngọc 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Vietnam National University, Hanoi? ?? is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Arts at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi The. .. ii ABSTRACT This study investigates how English quantifiers are used as hedges in theses by MA students of English at the University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), Vietnam National. .. DECLARATION I hereby certify the thesis entitled ? ?A study of the English quantifiers as hedges used in theses by MA students of English at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam