English is the most widely used language of international communication. Written English, in particular, is the predominant medium for communication in scientific publications. For the purpose of enhancing the pedagogy of written instruction for nonnative Persian speaking writers of research articles, this study sought to reveal the similarities and differences in research articles written by Iranians and native speakers with regard to hedging strategies in writing. To this end, fifty English research articles (RA) (twenty-five written by Iranians and twenty-five by native speakers) in the field of medicine from 16 leading magazines such as Iranian Journal of Public Health and The New England Journal of Medicine were analyzed. The study focused on two sections of the RAs, namely, Introduction and Discussion. Concerning the hedging categories proposed by Salager-Meyer (1994), there was no significant difference between the use of hedging categories, namely, compounds, approximators, and emotionally-charged expressions, in Introductions of articles written by Iranians and English native scholars in medicine. However, a significant difference was found in the use of hedging categories in the Discussion of the articles written by the two groups of writers. The findings of the present study suggested that there is a significant difference between the use of hedging, regardless of the distribution and percentages of the categories, in medical article Introductions and Discussions written by Iranians and Native-speaking scholars. The results of the study can greatly contribute to the pedagogy of ESP writing instruction with implications for instructional practice and material development. Teaching students specific rhetorical structures and particular features of the texts in a particular genre can be of great value for the development of their ability to communicate their research findings more effectively within the discourse community.
