Connectives and phraseological units in Italian L2: a parallel investigation

This study presents a corpus-based analysis of the use and production of Italian connectives and phraseological units in Italian L2 learners of different levels of language proficiency. Connectives and phraseological units play a key role in L2 usage. On one hand, connectives help learners to organize the informational structure of the text and to connect sentences and text blocks. On the other hand, phraseological units positively influence L2 fluency and usage. Learners tend to use both connectives and phraseological units from the earliest stages of learning. However, the development of their use appears to be non-linear in the L2. The present study investigates, therefore, whether and to what extent there is progress in the use of connectives and phraseological units in L2 learners of Italian.