Even at university level, writing and reading may both prove to be challenging for students (about Hungarian learners see Fekete & Divéki, 2023; Pereszlényi, 2023). The skills required from students for successful academic writing are much in line with the key features of skills needed in the 21st, such as innovation, creativity, problem-based learning or student-driven learning (World Economic Forum, 2020). With access to a wealth of online resources, students may be overwhelmed and need guidance. The development of creativity, critical thinking, critical reading, digitals skills, ways to look for and transfer information are necessary components of a skills development syllabus in higher education, not only for academic writing (Fekete & Divéki, 2023).

In addition to general skills development, the awareness raising of textual features by detailed analysis helps to form an analytical mindset, pattern-recognition and a more in-depth understanding. While analyzing Research Articles and MA theses, co-coders reported that the process of the identification of cohesive reference chains in a text is in itself a skill that is implicitly learned and refined in the process of the analysis. Presumably, the ability to maintain connections between text parts through referential cohesion is relevant both in the comprehension of discourse and in its production. On the basis of personal introspection during the process of the analysis, I assume that the development of the skill to identify cohesive ties fosters several writing subskills: effective paragraphing, using logical pronouns, determiners and conjunctions, which leads to a better sequencing of ideas and a stronger referential linkage between sentences. The analysis of reference (especially that in one’s own discourse) raises awareness of the connections among the reader’s perspective while writing and the actual text produced. This in turn might lead to better text production, and the avoidance of what Johns (1994) describes as a “bad text” (ibid., 108), one that does not provide appropriate clues for reader prediction or leaves these predictions unfulfilled. It highlights processes of the reader while decoding the structure of the text and the internal, probably only partially verbal, discourse going on in the text producer’s mind while creating the text. This awareness is necessary in the production of more reader-friendly discourse. Implicit learning is perceived as more effective than explicit learning by Hungarian adult language learners, which means that it is important to support students in finding ways to employ more implicit language learning habits (Zólyomi, 2021). Concerning RCA, this means opportunities to access, analyze and in this way, become aware of the structure of academic texts. Reading comprehension can be improved by supporting the ability to create clear and flexible mental images of the processed text that – by means of the improvement of long-term memory – enables the reader to store central concepts better while reading and writing. More efficient reading techniques are likely to contribute to a better noticing of reference structures which can then transform into more coherent text production.