HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN L1 AND L2 ARGUMENTATIVE PARAGRAPHS: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING L2 ACADEMIC WRITING THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SOCIAL SCIENCES OF MIDDLE EAST TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY BY SEDEF ALGI IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING AUGUST, 2012 i Approval of the Graduate School of Social Sciences Prof. Dr. Meliha Altunışık Director I certify that this thesis satisfies all the requirements as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Prof. Dr. Wolf König Head of Department This is to certify that we have read this thesis and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts. Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiler Hatipoğlu Supervisor Examining Committee Members Prof. Dr. Hüsnü Enginarlar (METU, FLE) Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiler Hatipoğlu (METU, FLE) Prof. Dr.Yasemin Bayyurt (BOUN, FLE) i PLAGIARISM I hereby declare that all information in this document has been obtained and presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. I also declare that, as required by these rules and conduct, I have fully cited and referenced all material and results that are not original to this work. Name, Last name : Sedef ALGI Signature : iii ABSTRACT HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN L1 AND L2 ARGUMENTATIVE PARAGRAPHS: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING L2 ACADEMIC WRITING Sedef Algı M.A., Department of English Language Teaching Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiler Hatipoğlu August 2012, 288 pages This study investigates the types, frequencies and functions of hedges and boosters employed in L1 and L2 argumentative paragraphs written by Turkish learners of English with pre- intermediate level of proficiency. It aims to uncover whether or not Turkish learners of English writing in L1 and L2 display any transfer in their employment of hedges and boosters. The extent to which the academic writing teaching materials result in any measurable change in the employment of hedges and boosters is also pursued. To this end, the data that is comprised of 104 (52 Turkish and 52 English) argumentative paragraphs written as a response to a TOEFL essay prompt are collected. The analysis of the data is done manually and each paragraph is coded and formatted in CLAN CHILDES. Later, PASW is used to run the descriptive statistics and calculate the frequency and percentages of hedges and boosters. The results show that the types, frequencies, and meanings of hedges and boosters are culture and language-specific and they are topic and genre dependent. Research iv findings also reveal that the participants in this study often express appropriate degree of certainty and pragmatic vagueness while writing in L1 and L2. However, there are some cases in which the evidence of rhetorical transfer are observed with respect to functions of certain hedges. The findings further indicate that there is a parallelism between the teaching materials used in academic writing classes and the types, frequencies and functions of hedges and boosters produced in L2 paragraphs. Keywords: academic writing, hedges and boosters, L1 and L2 rhetorical transfer, pragmatic vagueness, writing materials. v ÖZ BİRİNCİ VE İKİNCİ DİLDE YAZILMIŞ ELEŞTİREL PARAGRAFLARDA KAÇINMA SÖZCÜKLERİ (Hedges) VE VURGULAMA SÖZCÜKLERİNİN (Boosters) ROLÜ: İKİNCİ DİLDE AKADEMİK YAZIM ÖĞRETİMİ İÇİN ÖNERİLER Sedef Algı Yüksek Lisans, İngiliz Dili Öğretimi Bölümü Tez Yöneticisi: Doç. Dr. Çiler Hatipoğlu Ağustos 2012, 288 sayfa Bu çalışma, orta-düzey öncesi İngilizce bilen Türkler tarafından birinci (Türkçe) ve ikinci dilde (İngilizce) yazılmış tartışma paragraflarındaki kaçınma sözcükleri (hedges) ve vurgulama ifadelerinin (boosters) tip, sıklık ve fonksiyonlarını araştırmaktadır. İngilizce öğrenen Türkler’in birinci ve ikinci dilde yazarken, kaçınma sözcükleri ve vurgulama sözcükleri kullanımında sözbilimsel aktarım olup olmadığını bulmayı amaçlar. Ayrıca, akademik yazım öğretiminde kullanılan materyallerinin, kaçınma sözcükleri ve vurgulama sözcüklerinin tip, sıklık ve fonksiyonel kullanımları bakımından ne derecede ölçülebilir bir değişikliğe sebep olduğunu da araştırmaktadır. Bu tez, akademik yazım materyalleri hazırlanırken göz önünde bulundurulacak hususları sağlamayı da amaçlamaktadır. Bu amaçla, TOEFL makalesi yönlendiricisine cevaben yazılmış 104 adet (52’si Türkçe ve 52’si İngilizce) tartışma paragrafından vi oluşan veri toplanmıştır. Veri analizi el ile kodlanarak yapılmıştır. CLAN CHILDES programı kullanılarak, paragraflarda kullanılan kaçınma sözcükleri ve vurgulama sözcüklerinin tip, sıklık ve bağlamsal fonksiyonları belirlenmiştir. Daha sonra, nicel analiz olarak PASW kullanılmış ve kaçınma sözcükleri ve vurgulama sözcüklerinin sıklık ve yüzdeleri hesaplanmıştır. Araştırmanın sonucu, kaçınma ve vurgulama sözcüklerinin tip, sıklık ve anlamlarının dil, kültür, konu ve yazım türüne özgü değişiklik gösterebileceğini ortaya koymuştur. Ayrıca, bulgular, bu çalışmadaki İngilizce’yi yabancı dil olarak öğrenen Türkler’in, birinci ve ikinci dilde yazarken, uygun derecede kesinlik ve bağlamsal belirsizlikten yararlandığı da sıklıkla gözlemlenmiştir. Ancak bazı durumlarda, kullanılan kaçınma sözcüklerinin kullanım fonksiyonlarında sözbilimsel aktarım örneklerine de rastlanmıştır. Ayrıca, bulgular, akademik yazım derslerinde kullanılan materyaller ve ikinci dilde yazılan paragraflarda kullanılan kaçınma sözcükleri ve vurgulama sözcükleri arasında paralellik olduğunu göstermektedir. Anahtar kelimeler: akademik yazım, kaçınma sözcükleri ve vurgulama sözcükleri, birinci ve ikinci dil arası sözbilimsel aktarım, bağlamsal belirsizlik, yazım materyalleri. vii DEDICATION Öğretmenlerim ve Öğrencilerime, Geçmiş, Şu An ve Gelecektekilere To My Instructors and Students Past, Present, and Future viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to all the people for their support and contributions to the realization of this thesis. Before anybody else, I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Çiler Hatipoğlu, whose brilliant ideas, unconditional support and encouragement from the very early day to the final step enabled me to develop a better understanding of the subject and to embrace the challenges in every step of the thesis. I am greatly indebted for her invaluable contributions she has made, substantial feedback she has given me, and her great hugs that have always relieved any sort of despair and brought light and joy to my life. Thank you Çiler Hocam for bringing light to my life! Without you, this study would have been accomplished. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to my committee members Prof. Dr. Hüsnü Enginarlar for his valuable, constructive feedback and support he has given me and Prof. Dr. Yasemin Bayyurt for her detailed comments and contributions and tremendously helpful suggestions. I am grateful to Banu Köker Tuncay and my students for their support and valuable help they have provided me during the challenging task of collecting the data. Thank you Banu! If it had not been you, I do not think I would have had such a corpus to analyze. I was also fortunate enough to have my friends Ayşe Esra İyidoğan, Tuba Okçu, and Sevgi Şahin, the best friends ever, by my side who have always supported me at the times when everything seemed hopeless and impossible. I would also like to thank them for their valuable contributions throughout the process of writing the thesis. I am indebted to my friend Ayşe Esra İyidoğan, who has helped me entering the data into ix CLAN CHILDES program and her constant support. Thank you Esra for letting me use your dinner table and write the very first sentence of my thesis in your lovely peaceful living room. I am grateful to Sevgi Şahin and Tuba Okçu for accepting the very challenging task of being a rater. I am further grateful to Tuba Okçu, who has been there for me in every crisis moment I have had during the analysis of the data. She has listened to me nagging and has constantly reminded me of the great joy of success I will feel after I finish the thesis. Thank you Tuba for being such a great and caring friend. I also owe a debt of gratitude to my wonderful friends Semirhan Gökçe and Tülay Acaray, who have supported and encouraged me all the way. Semirhan has spent hours on formatting the thesis and made great jokes to cheer me up whenever I feel down. Thank you Semirhan, you cannot imagine how much your being there for me at the very toughest times and your working on my thesis as if it was your own have meant to me. Finally and most importantly, my heart-felt gratitude goes to my family, to my parents and brothers for their unconditional love, infinite patience and enormous emotional support and care throughout this process. My dear Dad, Ömer Algı, thank you for your endless confidence and trust in me. You have always been sure that I will do the best in every aspect of my life as your daughter. Thank you for encouraging me to be an academician from the very early times of my education. x