223 UDK 811.163.42’232 811.163.42’367 Izvorni znanstveni rad Rukopis primljen 23. X. 2021. Prihvaćen za tisak 25. III. 2022. doi.org/10.31724/rihjj.48.1.10 Lidija Cvikić University of Zagreb, Faculty of Teacher Education Savska 77, HR-10020 Zagreb orcid.org/0000-0003-4090-0268 lidija.cvikic@ufzg.hr Ivana Trtanj J. J. Strossmayer University of Osijek, Faculty of Education Ul. cara Hadrijana 10, HR-31000 Osijek orcid.org/0000-0002-4700-8443 itrtanj@foozos.hr EXPRESSING CAUSALITY IN CROATIAN L1 AND L2 ARGUMENTATIVE WRITING An argumentative text should present evidence that prove the author’s claims, which im- plies logical organization of the text and expression of a cause-and-effect relationship. This paper explores the way of expressing causality in argumentative writing in Croatian as a mother tongue (L1), and a foreign language (L2). The study investigates Croatian L1 and L2 speakers’ use of causative connectives in various types of syntactic structures, based on the corpus of 110 argumentative essays (Croatian L1 N=55, Croatian L2 N=55). The results show that in order to express causality, L1 and L2 speakers use the same connectives, in the same syntactic types, but not at the same frequency. Croatian L1 speakers showed strong preference for using pa as a typical causal connective for coordinated and jer for subordinate compound sentences. In comparison to Croatian L1 speakers, L2 speakers showed two ten- dencies: to overuse some connectives ( jer, zato što ), and to underuse the others ( pa ). 1. Introduction The main objective of language learning within contemporary language teach- ing approaches is to develop learners’ communicative language competence. In that theoretical frame, a text, as “any sequence or discourse (spoken and/or