Hedging and boosting are significant communicative resources to construe and attain persuasion in different fields and particular genres of academic writing. Hedges allow the researcher to address possible problems, raise objections or anticipate opposition to the research claims while contributing something new to the ongoing dialogue in a research field. Boosters enormously help to achieve the essential writers’ need to convince their readership of the truth in their propositions. They are mainly used whenever writers consider it not too risky to include them in their propositions. This study aims to investigate the frequencies and functions of hedges and boosters in academic students' essays. To meet this end, 96 students' essays (a total of 269.428 words) were selected from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP), including English and Psychology disciplines. The corpus was analyzed based on Abdollahzadeh (2019)classification of hedges. The results showed that hedges and boosters were frequent enough to be considered in teaching writing, either reducing or increasing the force of written utterances. The results of this study could be used directly in the syllabus designed for academic essay writing. Manuscript profile

Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) and Technique Feature Analysis (TFA) are two frameworks which operationalize depth of processing of a vocabulary learning task. However, there is dearth of research comparing the predictive power of the ILH and the TFA across second language (L2) vocabulary learning tasks. The present study, therefore, aimed to examine this issue across four vocabulary learning tasks (i.e., reading with glosses, keyword techniques, word card, and reading and finding the words in text) ranked differently by the ILH and the TFA. To this end, 80 English as a foreign language (EFL) learners were randomly assigned to one of four tasks of learning 16 target words. The results of one-way ANOVA, LSD Post hoc tests, and multiple regression analyses showed that the TFA had a better explanatory power than the ILH in predicting vocabulary learning gains. The findings highlight the TFA as a more powerful framework. Manuscript profile

Frame markers are a broad interactive subcategory, displaying the writer-reader relationships. They can be characterized as items to frame information about discourse components and functioning for argument sequencing, labelling, predicting, and shifting while offering readers more discourse clarity. How to make good use of frame markers becomes one of the focuses in English writing classes. Thus, this study investigates the frequency and functions of frame markers in academic students' essays. To this end, 56 students' essays (totally 170.760 words) were selected from the Michigan Corpus of Upper-Level Student Papers (MICUSP), belonging to Philosophy and Psychology disciplines. The corpus was analysed considering Hyland's (2005) model of interactive metadiscourse into frequency and functions. The results showed that the frame markers were frequent enough to be considered in teaching writing genres. Besides, frame markers exhibited a significantly essential way, allowing writers organize their discourse according to certain audience and enabling them to observe the argument coherence and directing their thoughts toward what the author wished. Disciplinary differences concerning frequencies, types and functions of the frame markers were reported. The study results could directly be used in the syllabus designed for writing academic genres. Manuscript profile