The use of hedges in academic writing, especially in EFL students' argumentative writing remains relatively understudied in Vietnam. Therefore, this study was conducted to explore EFL learners' hedging behaviors and the occurrence of hedges in EAP writing courses. In particular, the research aimed to discover the frequency of hedging tokens in general and the types of hedges in the corpus of EFL students' argumentative essays at a tertiary institution in Central Vietnam. Moreover, this research investigated EFL students' perceptions of hedges and the representation of hedging elements in academic writing courses. To achieve these aims, thirty EFL students' argumentative essays were examined, five semi-structured interviews were conducted and analyzed thematically, and the textbook was manually scanned. Investigations into the corpus revealed the high frequency of hedges in the corpus, and the diverse distribution of various hedging categories. Textbook analysis implied that hedges were included with several functions. Responses from the interviews indicated EFL students' positive attitudes towards hedging language and the teaching practice in academic writing courses involving hedges. The results of this study offered pedagogical implications on the teaching and learning of academic writing.