The use of selected English determ iners by Polish users of English at different proficiency levels

Abstract

The objective of the article is a theoretical and practical analysis of the use of selected English determiners (e.g. articles, quantifiers, etc.) by Polish users of English representing different proficiency levels (B2-C2, in accordance with the CEFR, which stands for the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages). The practical part of the article will be centred on the demonstration of the use of the selected determiners based on the available corpus of L2 users (PELCRA PLEC). The first acronym denotes Polish and English Language and Corpora for Research and Applications (PELCRA), which is the result of scientific work of scholars from the University of Łódź. The other one (PLEC), stands for PELCRA English Learner Corpus (see the “References” section below). It is commonly known that learners/students find it difficult to use English determiners properly, as they are differently realised in their native language. It is generally assumed that learners/students will demonstrate different strategies in the use of the determiners in question. The strategies selected by them will revolve around hesitations, overuse, avoidance, non-use of the definite article the or the word that. Hence such idea of the research occurred, the objective of which is to verify and demonstrate learners’/students’ performance with reference to the selected words, which are challenging in all contexts.