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<p>This study examines how mid-adolescent students (ages 13–15) use connectives in expository writing across Basque, Spanish, and English, and whether such use predicts writing quality. Expository writing is a key academic genre in secondary education, and understanding how multilingual students deploy linguistic resources such as connectives is essential for characterising their writing development. The dataset included 136 students’ 408 expository texts (one per language per student) and scores from the Academic Language Proficiency (ALP) test, along with SES, gender, L1, and exposure to Basque as control variables. Descriptive, correlational, and regression analyses indicated that a higher frequency of analytic connectives was positively associated with writing quality, although this relationship varied across languages. In particular, analytic connectives emerged as significant predictors in some languages after controlling for sociodemographic factors, ALP, text length, and the use of basic connectives, whereas in English writing quality was primarily predicted by ALP. In contrast, a higher reliance on basic connectives was negatively associated with text quality. Writing quality was strongly correlated across Basque, Spanish, and English; however, while writing quality showed robust cross-linguistic associations, connective use displayed more language-specific and feature-dependent patterns. ALP and text length consistently predicted higher scores, whereas gender effects were positive in the female category. The study offers three contributions: (1) a multilingual taxonomy of connectives; (2) evidence that students rely heavily on basic connectives, highlighting the need for explicit instruction in analytic frequency and diversity<b>;</b> and (3) evidence that the relationship between analytic connective use and writing quality is robust but partly language-dependent, extending beyond ALP and sociodemographic variables in some contexts. These findings provide valuable insights for improving multilingual writing instruction.</p>

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An analysis of multilingual writing quality: the use of connectives in expository texts in Basque, Spanish, and English

  • 期刊论文

  • 出版模式：

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  • 发表日期：

    2026年7月13日

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  • Ane Lamarka-Etxeberria,
  • Oihana Leonet,
  • Olatz Lucas

摘要

This study examines how mid-adolescent students (ages 13–15) use connectives in expository writing across Basque, Spanish, and English, and whether such use predicts writing quality. Expository writing is a key academic genre in secondary education, and understanding how multilingual students deploy linguistic resources such as connectives is essential for characterising their writing development. The dataset included 136 students’ 408 expository texts (one per language per student) and scores from the Academic Language Proficiency (ALP) test, along with SES, gender, L1, and exposure to Basque as control variables. Descriptive, correlational, and regression analyses indicated that a higher frequency of analytic connectives was positively associated with writing quality, although this relationship varied across languages. In particular, analytic connectives emerged as significant predictors in some languages after controlling for sociodemographic factors, ALP, text length, and the use of basic connectives, whereas in English writing quality was primarily predicted by ALP. In contrast, a higher reliance on basic connectives was negatively associated with text quality. Writing quality was strongly correlated across Basque, Spanish, and English; however, while writing quality showed robust cross-linguistic associations, connective use displayed more language-specific and feature-dependent patterns. ALP and text length consistently predicted higher scores, whereas gender effects were positive in the female category. The study offers three contributions: (1) a multilingual taxonomy of connectives; (2) evidence that students rely heavily on basic connectives, highlighting the need for explicit instruction in analytic frequency and diversity; and (3) evidence that the relationship between analytic connective use and writing quality is robust but partly language-dependent, extending beyond ALP and sociodemographic variables in some contexts. These findings provide valuable insights for improving multilingual writing instruction.