The article shows how to fill the gap consisting in the lack of research on the attitudes of academic lecturers (other than language instructors), native speakers of the Polish language, towards mistakes made by students for whom Polish is not their mother tongue. The theoretical background is: (1) research conducted in English-language literature within the paradigm of “English as a lingua franca” – in particular with regard to higher education and its internationalization – which problematize the legitimacy of recognizing language patterns used by native speakers as the only or the most important criterion of linguistic competence; (2) the semi-peripheral nature of the higher education system in Poland. Polish academics, as authors of scientific texts, can become beneficiaries of approaches that deviate from orthodoxy regarding the English language in the case of publications in international (usually Anglo-Saxon) journals. Working in a semi-peripheral system, attracting more and more students from abroad (mainly from Ukraine), however, puts them in a different role: an oracle of linguistic correctness in accordance with the standards of academic Polish. The article considers possible scenarios for negotiating these two identities.