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TAC 2012 Polish Team Żubr | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Gosiak Triglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5125 days ago 241 posts - 361 votes  Speaks: Polish*, English, German Studies: Norwegian, Welsh | Message 81 of 83 01 October 2012 at 6:03pm | IP Logged | |||||
Very good ;) My subtle corrections: Właśnie wróciłem z Polski i mam trochę informacji i parę podręczników dla cudoziemców. Później napiszę więcej, jak będę miał trochę czasu. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 82 of 83 01 October 2012 at 6:12pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cholerne literówki. Dzięki, Gosia.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 83 of 83 10 October 2012 at 1:54am | IP Logged | |||||
Per my message last week I have a bit of information to pass on to you żubrom after my latest trip to Poland. In my log I mentioned that I picked up a few books during my trip (stores with the sign tanie książki are particularly hard for me to resist :-)) and found a couple of potential gems. I'll likely add them to the list of books reviewed in the Polish profile. The first item is "Wśród Polaków cz. 1 & 2" from the mid-1980s by Brygida Rudzka (Zofia Goczołowa is a co-author in part 1) and published by the Catholic University of Lublin. These form part of a 3-part series of textbooks for use in the classroom and together were meant to correspond to the progression of an undergraduate student from basic Polish in first year to advanced Polish by third or fourth year. In many ways they seem to be the communist bloc's counterparts and contemporaries of Oscar Swan's "First-Year Polish" and "Intermediate Polish" in the "Free World". Like Swan's books, they each unit combines sometimes quirky and humourous dialogues or narratives with many exercises and succint but helpful notes on the unit's grammatical focus. One big advantage of Wśród Polaków over Swan's books is that the appendices have answer keys. Audio (cassettes only) for the course seems obtainable from Cornell University's Language Resource Center for $24 US (before shipping?) but the site's copyright of 2007 makes me wonder if the listing is up to date. Swan's books have accompanying audio too which still seems obtainable through the site of his drilling software "Lektorek". The audio for First-Year Polish is also available in .aiff through his website at the University of Pittsburgh for the revised online version of "First-Year Polish" I think that if one has enjoyed using one of Oscar Swan's courses before, then he/she should feel quite comfortable using "Wśród Polaków". One point of caution is that despite the mention of three volumes, it seems that only the first two volumes have been available for the last several years (see here for more discussion). This is unfortunate as I'd be glad to have the third volume for times when I feel the need to stretch my ability in Polish as much as possible in a structured way. I suspect that the earlier dominance of the courses by Swan and Schenker ("First-Year Polish" and "Intermediate Polish" by Swan; "Beginning Polish" by Schenker) in the English-speaking world meant that "Wśród Polaków" got limited and added to its possible disadvantage of being from the "wrong" side of the Iron Curtain (now that I think of it, it's a little surprising that it was put out at all since the Anglosphere wasn't part of the Communist Bloc and so the books' target audience of Anglophones learning Polish would have been smaller than in these days of Erasmus exchanges and similar as well as greater movement of people between Poland and the rest of the world). As far as I know UC Berkeley and University of Northern Iowa used the first volume as late as 2005, but sometime since then Berkeley replaced it with the newer and visually flashier Hurra! Po polsku 1 while the other university no longer offers classes in Polish. The aforementioned series "Hurra! po polsku" as well as "Język polski dla cudzoziemców" (e.g. "Cześć, jak się masz?", "Z polskim na ty") are common choices to teach Polish as a foreign language these days thus making the older "Wśród Polaków" seem even more dated in a growing pool of learning material. On the plus side, the course's low profile and seeming discontinuation means that it can be found for a pittance (...in Poland at least. I've seen booksellers outside Poland charging about $20 or more for each volume). The publisher is selling brand-new copies of vol. 1 at 7.35 zlotys (~ $2.25 US) apiece while vol. 2 goes for 2.10 zlotys (~ $0.65 US). This price is consistent with what I saw in physical bookstores throughout Poland including the one where I snagged a copy of vol. 2 being more suitable for my level in Polish. What's the harm in being 2 zlotys poorer? The second item is the series "Polish in 4 weeks". I had the book in mind again after stelingo mentioned it in a favourable light recently. I've known about the course for a few years but didn't give it that much thought until my latest trip since it seemed a little skimpy on the exercises (and still does). However I picked up the second volume for intermediate students (the cover says that it's suitable for review or those at B1 (or those wanting to move to B1 from A2)) seeing that the short dialogues and focus on colloquial language (neither excessive slang nor officious or formal stuff that's typical of writing) nicely complement the "heavier" stuff in "Kiedyś wrócisz tu". Now that I have vol. 2 and after having had another good look at vol. 1 in the bookstore, I'd strongly recommend prospective learners of Polish to take a look at these books as alternatives to "Colloquial Polish", "Mastering Polish" or "Teach Yourself Polish". Using the volumes of "Polish in 4 weeks" in sequence is supposed to take the user from scratch to B1 (about the same progress obtainable with each of those other 3 courses that I mentioned) but give more exposure to grammatical topics by introducing them and then reviewing them in later exercises (in other the 28 lessons allow for a finer division / presentation of the grammar). In addition, there are more engrossing dialogues/situations as both volumes of Polish in 4 weeks have a bit of soap opera feel and continuity with the characters including changes in the love lives of two of the characters (one of the protagonists dumps her largely absentee boyfriend in vol. 1 for a friend of another protagonist, and she's still with that second guy at the start of vol. 2). Notwithstanding the title (each volume has 28 lessons, and so if worked on daily the course would be finished in 4 weeks) I can now better understand the positive reception of this series as exemplified here. Maybe a better strategy would be to complete a lesson at minimum every 3 or 4 days. Each volume comes with a CD lasting a little less than an hour - no English instructions, just dialogues in Polish - and in total costs 45 zlotys (about $15 US). Therefore for about $30 (i.e. a little less than the retail price for TY Polish or Colloquial Polish with their CDs), you can get both volumes for an otherwise comparable course that's packed with colloquial language, more exercises per topic, and a more gradual introduction to the associated grammar. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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