This presentation focuses on a study investigating Macedonian EFL students’ choices of epicene pronouns in written academic English, drawing on data from the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE). The distribution of he, he or she, and singular they was analysed in 317 student essays from the Macedonian subcorpus. Each instance was coded by antecedent type, degree of individuation, and learner variables such as gender and year of study at the university. The results show that singular they is the most frequent choice, followed by he and he or she, with antecedent individuation strongly shaping pronoun selection.

From a theoretical perspective, the findings test and refine claims about the individuation hierarchy. As predicted, they was primarily used with indefinite pronouns, while he and he or she were more common with definite noun phrases. Yet the high overall frequency of they, surpassing even native corpora from earlier decades, suggests that prescriptive norms and L1 transfer cannot account for its prevalence. Instead, the Macedonian data underscore the impact of global discourse shifts toward gender inclusivity, showing how learners may adopt forms that are not available in their L1 system. 

Macedonian is a South Slavic language with a morphologically marked gender system and no direct equivalent of singular they. This typological profile makes Macedonian learners an especially valuable population for examining how cross-linguistic transfer interacts with exposure to changing norms in English. The fact that the learners favoured they despite the masculine generics of their mother supports arguments for the pervasiveness of singular they across typologically diverse backgrounds. These findings provide new insights into how epicene pronoun use is acquired in expanding-circle contexts.