Cunnings (2016) argues that differences between native (L1) and second language (L2) sentence processing can best be accounted for in terms of recipiency to effects of interference and an overreliance on discourse level cues during memory retrieval. His suggestion for the ‘overuse’ of discourse is, however, too wide and has to be refined in terms of the specific contexts and conditions under which learners have difficulty. It is also believed that difficulty with cue-based retrieval is still a characterization of the symptoms of differences between L1-L2 processing, and does not inevitably address the variability source.