The aim of the dissertation is to study the use of connectors by Finnish-speaking learners of Swedish. Connectors are important means of cohesion, but so far, their use in the texts of learners of Swedish has only been studied incompletely, and stud-ies have often lacked a clear theoretical basis. For this reason, in my dissertation I study the use of connectors by learners of Swedish by utilizing systemic-functional linguistics (SFL), according to which language can be defined as an abstract meaning potential that language users utilize to meaning-making in different communicative situations. According to SFL theory, the goal of language learning is thus the expansion of this meaning potential.

The dissertation is article-based and consists of four sub-studies. The first three sub-studies mainly examine the use of connectors from a dynamic perspective. The first sub-study focuses on changes in learners' use of connectors at the individual level at the lowest language levels A1–B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). In the second sub-study, the phenomenon is studied at group level in texts by more advanced language learners at proficiency levels B1–C1, and learners' use of connectors is compared with that of native speakers. The third sub-study, in turn, deals with the use of connectors by language learners during the writing process. The fourth sub-study compares the use of connectors in two different learner languages, namely Swedish and German.

The research data consists of two different learner language corpora. In sub-studies I and II, data collected in connection with the Topling research project funded by the Academy of Finland at the University of Jyväskylä is used. The text type studied in these two first sub-studies is a narrative text. The data used in sub-studies III and IV is part of the material from the Helsek project funded by Svenska kulturfonden. In this material, the text type is argumentative text, and the data was collected using the keystroke-logging program ScriptLog. The research method is SFL-based text analysis.

The results of the sub-studies show that the use of connectors by learners of Swe-dish becomes more varied and target-like as they move to higher proficiency levels. On the other hand, the changes after level B1 are mainly qualitative, and at proficiency level C1, learners also use less frequent connectors that do not appear at lower levels. From the perspective of the writing process, it can be stated that learners mainly use the same connectors during the process that also appear in the final prod-ucts. Most of the edits are related to variation between a connector and a full stop. The contrastive analysis, in turn, shows that the biggest difference between learners and native speakers relates to the colloquial style in L1 texts. When comparing the use of connectors in learner Swedish and German, the results show that the use of connectors in these two languages is very similar. The biggest differences are related to so-called elaborations, which are used significantly less in German due to the language’s more complex relative pronoun system.

From a theoretical-methodological perspective, the dissertation shows that the SFL theory is a good starting point for research dealing with second and foreign language learning, and therefore this theory, which has previously been used less in L2 studies, could be used more in the future. The results of the dissertation can also be utilized in the development of language teaching, where more attention should be paid to text-level phenomena and multilingualism.