The present study examined the effect of explicit instruction about linguistic hedging on the English for Specific Academic Purposes (ESAP) reading comprehension performance of English Language Learning (ELL) university students through an awareness raising task. A reading comprehension test was developed and validated as the pre-test and post-test. The test, including items for assessing the comprehension of students in their area of specialization, was administered to 100 lower-level and 100 higher-level language proficient undergraduates who were randomly assigned to experimental and control conditions. Then, participants attended ten class sessions on hedging. During the first three sessions, the participants in the experimental group were instructed on the essential meaning of a hedge, as well as the types and functions of hedging devices. The next sessions focused on the practical use of these markers as they appear in academic texts. After the treatment, the test was again given to the same students as the post-test. The results of two "t" tests and a two-way ANOVA provided empirical support for the facilitative effect of explicit instruction in recognizing hedging devices that improved their language proficiency and, therefore, improved their reading comprehension scores. (Contains 9 tables.)