Development of Causal Connectives in Italian L1 and L2 Student Writing: A Comparison of Argumentative Texts from Lower and Upper Secondary School

In this article, we investigate the explicit signalling of causal relations by means of causal connectives in Italian student writing. We compare four groups of students divided by their language background (L1 or L2 writers) and developmental stage (lower vs. upper secondary school) to see whether writers with different backgrounds develop similarly between year 8 and year 12 of schooling. In particular, we analyse number, ratio and diversity of causal connectives together with lexical sophistication and range of these items. We furthermore inspect the causal connectives used within the groups qualitatively and observe over- and underuse of specific connectives using correspondence analysis. Our study represents the first of this kind on Italian and one of the few that observes development over a longer time interval on both L1 and L2 students. It shows similar trends as previous studies on connective use in general, while providing a closer look at a specific type of connectives thought to be integral for argumentative writing.