The influence of L1 Dutch on connective use in L2 German academic writing

Abstract The present study provides a comparative corpus-based analysis of summaries written by three groups: first-language (L1) German writers, second-language (L2) German writers with L1 Dutch, and L2 German writers with other L1s. The aim is to determine whether there are differences in connective use between L1 and L2 writers in summary writing and whether there are L1 Dutch-specific differences. The results show that L2 German writers with non-Dutch L1s use fewer connectives than L1 German writers, whereas L2 German writers with L1 Dutch use more connectives, especially expansion and contingency connectives. In addition, L2 German writers prefer certain connectives (e.g., und (and), weil (because)) and L2 German writers with L1 Dutch aber (but). Overall, this study highlights the importance of (contrastively) analysing summary writing as well as considering under-researched language pairs such as German and Dutch.