Arguably, one of the most difficult tasks in writing is to see the written text from an outsider’s point of view and anticipate the appropriate amount of background knowledge on the part of the reader to be able to supply enough information to make the text comprehensible without it becoming boring and repetitive. As a result of deep involvement in a research topic, not only the topic itself but also many recurring problems and logical connections may appear too obvious for the novice writer to mention, as in the example below, where the reader is left without a specification of which field the writer intends to contribute to.

A slightly different problem is illustrated in example s. 360 where the definite article is used with the first occurrence of an item (here the 114 Moves) in the text. Sentence (b) is from the Discussion part of a thesis, and the item in bold is the first constituent of a long chain of reference. Therefore, the reader might expect this item to be more specific, for example, the 114 Moves found in the corpus of ... (see Swales & Feak, 1994 on the definite article used with the first mention).

Another frequent problem in student theses is the use of the definite article with a plural NP for an intended general meaning (see Swales & Feak, 1994; Biber et al., 1991). Biber list three possible forms in English to express generic reference, (1) zero article with an uncountable noun, (2) zero article with a plural countable noun, and a less common form, mainly used in fiction is (3) the use of an indefinite or definite article with a singular countable noun. However, the interference of Hungarian, where the definite article with a plural NP is frequently used with a generic meaning, results in errors like:

The definite article with the plural NP students will prompt the reader to search for an antecedent in the text, instead of readily interpreting the NP as having an exophoric, generic reference to any group of students.