The use of the selected lexical and function words to, there, before by L2 Polish users at different proficiency levels

The objective of this article will be both the theoretical and the practical analysis of the use of the selected English lexical and function words (to, there, before) by Polish users of English representing different proficiency levels. The practical part, in particular, will concern the use of the afore-mentioned, selected words comprising both categories based on the available corpus of L2 users (PELCRA – PLEC). The first acronym refers to Polish and English Language and Corpora for Research and Applications (PELCRA), which is the result of scientific work of the scholars from the University of Łódź. The other one (PLEC), stands for PELCRA English Learner Corpus (see the Bibliography section below). It is commonly known that learners/ students may demonstrate their awareness and professional knowledge with reference to the basic use and comprehension of words in their primary meaning, namely lexical words. The problems arise when they need to confront their current knowledge and awareness while discovering that some words are ambiguous or polysemous. Hence the idea of such research, the intention of which is to validate the students’ performance when faced with words, which are only seemingly simple and predictable.