The hypothesis of the linguistic interdependence (Cummins, 1979) proposes that there are certain features that are transferred from the mother tongue (L1) to the second language (L2). The use of this hypothesis is known as 'transfer' and it has been studied mainly in English comprehension, with a focus on reading strategies. Since research related to language transfer has focused mainly on this area, it is of interest to know how transfer has been investigated in writing in recent years, especially considering the epistemic nature of written production and the importance of writing in English in the globalized world. Under this scenario, the objective of this research is to describe the role of transfer from L1 to L2 in current studies that have addressed writing in English. To this end, a systematic review of current articles published in journals indexed in Scopus and Web of Science (WoS) was carried out. The main results reveal that 73 % of the studies are current and 40 % are interested in the rhetorical organization, mainly from Chinese to English. In relation to the methodology, the approach was predominantly quantitative, with a correlative scope and with a non-experimental design. Even though in 73 % of the studies it was possible to identify a transfer from L1 to L2, some methodological problems were found that are necessary to consider in future research to guarantee the internal and external validity of the results.