This papers deals with the nature and 'effectiveness' of 'explicitness' in the signalling of relations in written discourses. To clarify relations between discourse features and readers' inferential tendencies an empirical study is presented that examines problems of English second language readers in identifying `hypothetical–real' contrasts, which apparently conflict with these readers' widespread inferential tendencies. Subjects' responses seem susceptible to the 'explicitness' of contrastive signalling, yet not to the 'sequence' of introducing contrasting hypothetical and real terms in texts.