Over the decades, Hedging and Modality have been discussed by linguists and researchers as a basic concept in English for academic purposes. There have been many studies conducted, of which purpose is to discuss hedging and modality as they are used in foreign contexts. Few of them have been conducted so as to understand their roles, functions and forms as they apply to academic writings in the Kurdish universities’ English context. This study investigates the importance of using hedging and modality in academic discourse. It also explores how modality and hedging have been taught, and to what extent students are aware of the appropriate use of hedging and modality in their writing. With regards to data analysis and collection, the qualitative method was used for creating the research paradigm. The results from literature review and data analysis show that Kurdish students are not conscious of the use of hedging and modality as it is significant for L2 learners. The findings also revealed that students were taught modal auxiliary verbs and adverbs explicitly. This paper suggests that teaching hedging and modality by using inductive examples, and by focusing on forms and functions will help Kurdish learners to distinguish themselves by using more boosters and tentative language in their academic discourse.
Keywords: forms and functions of modality, hedging as a grammatical communicative concept., modality in academic discourse, types of hedging
