Izvorni znanstveni članak
https://doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.50.2.8
Connectives in Language Production in L2 German and L1 Croatian
Leonard Pon
orcid.org/0000-0002-2905-5828
; Filozofski fakultet u Osijeku
Sažetak
The main goal of foreign language learning is to develop the ability to communicate. One of the crucial aspects of this ability is captured by the term discourse competence which refers to the way messages are structured and organized. This research aims to gain insight into the features of discourse competence in L2 German compared to L1 Croatian by analysing the use of connectives. The goal of the research is to determine the frequency, range, appropriateness and patterns of connectives’ use in written language production in L2 German and L1 Croatian. This analysis adopts the definition of connectives including adverbials, coordinators and subordinators. The corpus used in the analysis comprises texts collected using an identical task for both languages. The participants were 75 students whose German language competence equals to the CEFR level B2. The qualitative analysis of connective use was performed using MAXQDA 24, whereas the statistical analysis was performed using SPSS 20. The results revealed a statistically significantly higher relative frequency of use of connectives and a statistically significantly smaller range of connectives for L2 German as compared to L1 Croatian. L2 texts in German exhibit a statistically significantly higher occurence of inappropriate use and syntactically incorrect use. Problems in the use of connectives in L2 German are possibly caused by the semantics and pragmatics of connectors, by an insufficiently developed ability to determine the logico-semantic relation between parts of the text, and by the influence of L1 Croatian and L2 English. Both in L2 German and in L1 Croatian instances of non-systematic use of correlative and correlative-like connectives could be observed. The results imply the need for further research into this aspect of discourse competence, comprehensive treatment of connectives in teaching materials and their systematic explicit instruction in foreign language teaching.
Ključne riječi
German as L2; Croatian as L1; connectives; cohesion; discourse competence
Hrčak ID:
329187
URI
Datum izdavanja:
31.12.2024.
Posjeta: 58 *