It has been shown by research on several languages, including Hungarian, that linguistic items used to establish reference may be very problematic for ESL/EFL students. In Flowerdew’s (2001) interview study, editors acknowledged that NNS writers produced texts with “surface language errors”, such as “article usage or subject-verb concord” (134). Languages studied most frequently in terms of their use of reference as a cohesive device are Finnish and Chinese. These studies show that reference can be highly problematic for non-native students, which suggests that similar research might also be informative and relevant in a Hungarian context. Finnish students, for example, experience difficulties in using reference, because there are no articles or prepositions, which affects second-language production of these items (Connor, 1996; Mauranen, 1990, 1993; Ventola & Mauranen, 1991). Apart from serious difficulties using articles, Finnish students also use little metalanguage (fewer demonstratives) to orient the reader, which makes their texts demanding for readers. Learning to produce writer-responsible, context independent texts is difficult even for native speakers. The writer needs to anticipate the amount of explicit bridging the reader needs between segments of the text. Misjudging such reader expectations may result in “textual incoherence” (Leki, 1991, 139). Reference was found problematic for Chinese EFL writers, as well, particularly the use of articles for maintaining referential identity (Liu & Braine, 2005; Reid, 1992). In another study, Thai students were found to use reference as a cohesive device less frequently than English NS students (Indrasuta, 1988). Reference markers were found to be the highest frequency items in student academic writing in an analysis of a hundred student essays based on Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) framework (Kashiha, 2022). In addition, this same study found reference the second most problematic after conjunctions (with around 26% of reference items used incorrectly) which makes this cohesive element worthy of attention.

When writing essays students need to balance their aim for originality, clarity, and coherence while also working under the constraints of time and language proficiency (Mustafa et al., 2023). Articles are mentioned as typical sources of difficulty for learners by Trimble (1985) as their appropriate use does not only depend on knowledge of syntax and semantics, but also presupposes some knowledge of the subject matter and its conventions. Subject related lexical knowledge is also stressed by Tyrkkö (2007), who points to students’ being unfamiliar with the terminology of a specialized genre, which makes co-referential relations impossible to follow, often resulting in apparent incoherence.

Grabe and Kaplan (1998) also claim that contrastive studies provide a knowledge base for ESL/EFL teachers and students, and some of its “findings can be (and indeed have been) applied to teaching” (269). By drawing pedagogical implications, this comparative research intends to contribute to the body of research on academic writing, as yet “the relationship between expert and novice practices is far from clear” (North, 2005, 433). By a contrastive analysis of Hungarian student writing and English expert writing this study is hoped to contribute to research in written discourse analysis and applied linguistics by providing data concerning Hungarian advanced learners’ difficulties using reference as a cohesive device and provide pedagogical implications by showing how experts realize those functions in writing that seem problematic for Hungarian learners.