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 Language Learning Forum : Language Programs, Books & Tapes |  | |
| yantai_scot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4590 days ago 157 posts - 214 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 6 23 May 2014 at 11:58pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd like to learn some Polish. At the moment, for polite conversation when I'm out
walking the dog etc. Nothing too fancy. A2 would be a good target for me right now. It's the second language here and my dreadful nosiness demands that I find out what people are talking about... For my German, I feel I've got a set of books I like to work with. I like my Assimil and Hugo Complete set. With 'Living German' and '701 German Verbs as back up. I've found the '301 Polish verbs'. There isn't an Assimil course for Polish in an English base. I don't speak French and I'm not going to anytime soon... So I'm considering the Hugo Polish in 3 months and TY Polish- although there seems to be a number of courses in the range... But don't want to order them until I've heard your opinions as I've read mixed reviews on Amazon. I'd be learning on my own to start with but getting an unqualified Polish tutor or conversation exchange later on should be straightforward. Are there any other affordable resources I should consider if the above aren't so good in Polish? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4918 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 6 24 May 2014 at 12:21am | IP Logged | ||
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I've not tried Hugo Polish in Three Months, but used TY Polish. I didn't care for it,
really. I got a lot of use out of Michel Thomas Method Polish with Jolanta Cecula, both the Foundation and Advanced. "Advanced" is quite the stretch of the imagination, but it was a good, logical extension of the Foundation course. You might be able to find a copy at your local library. The Pimsleur course was OK, too, I suppose. The other resource that's free is First Year Polish, produced by the University of Pittsburgh. Has lots of good audio and text, exercises, etc. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Speakeasy Senior Member Canada Joined 3840 days ago 507 posts - 1098 votes Studies: German | Message 3 of 6 24 May 2014 at 3:10am | IP Logged | ||
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@yantai scot,
Slavic languages can be quite a challenge for English-speakers. Nevertheless, I agree with @hrhenry that Michel Thomas Polish is a good place to begin. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Total-Polish-Michel-Thomas-Method/dp /144417276X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1400892128&sr=8-3&keyword s=michel+thomas+polish I would add the following summary of Polish grammar to your list of essential books. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Polish-Essentials-Grammar-Second-Edi tion/dp/0071597468/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1400892216&sr=8-2& keywords=polish+verbs However, although I enjoyed using the Pimsleur Approach for studying German, Spanish, and Italian, I found that its inherent weaknesses prevented it from being a good choice for Polish. As a possible follow-up to the Michel Thomas Polish course, you might consider Routledge's Colloquial Polish: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colloquial-Polish-Complete-Course-Be ginners/dp/0415559472/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400892747&sr=8 -1&keywords=colloquial+polish. Be sure that you order both the book and the cds as they are often sold separately; this is not clear on Amazon. It is a very sold, BASIC course that is designed to help travellers make themselves understood in typical situations: ordering a meal, calling a taxi, booking a hotel room, asking for directions, etcetera. Nonetheless, with all of the foregoing, you will probably still not be at the A2 Level, unless you can find some means of increasing your vocabulary and of practicing the spoken language. PODCASTS I have not tried these myself, but they're most likely worth reviewing once you've acquired a basic knowledge of the language: http://www.polishpod101.com/index.php# http://bloggypolish.co.uk/ http://www.missioneurope.eu/ BEGINNING POLISH, Alexander Schenker (equals FSI BASIC POLISH) Finally, if you really want some punishing DRILLS, you could always try BEGINNING POLISH (Volumes 1 and 2) by Alexander M. Schenker. The Foreign Service Institute (FSI) was one of the sponors when this course was developed in the early 1960's and Shenker's opus reflects the rigorous FSI approach that was in vogue during that period. Here is the link to the 50+ hours of audio files: http://archive.cls.yale.edu/polish/ And you can still find the textbooks on Amazon. If you choose this method, be sure to acquire both volumes as the second includes exercises that are coordinated with the first. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-Polish-v-Yale-Language/dp/ 0300016530/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1400896374&sr=8-1&keywords =beginning+polish%2C+schenker http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-Polish-v-Alexander-Schenke r/dp/B00DJYJ8NY/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1400896374&sr=8-8&key words=beginning+polish%2C+schenker FSI POLISH FAST From what I understand, the Foreign Service Institute adopted the Schenker text and, some years later, developed a newer one based on their FAST approach. It does NOT contain the sentence-pattern-drills of the former and, since it was meant to be used in a classroom setting, the textbook can seem to be lacking in some essential details. While you can find the textbook pdf file on the FSI-Language-Courses.org website, the audio files are not available. There is still at least one reseller of the combined pdf text files and the mp3 audio files. Quite frankly, I find their asking price of 99.95$ exaggerated as all they are offering is a DVD that contains the files. For the same investment, you could purchase the Schenker texts and you would have much more material. Nonetheless, here's the link: http://www.foreignserviceinstitute.com/ Edited by Speakeasy on 24 May 2014 at 4:06am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| drygramul Tetraglot Senior Member Italy Joined 4256 days ago 165 posts - 269 votes Speaks: Persian, Italian*, EnglishC2, GermanB2 Studies: French, Polish | Message 4 of 6 24 May 2014 at 10:26am | IP Logged | ||
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It should be pointed out that all the speakers in the MT course are foreigners with a wrong pronounciation of the polish language.
That makes the product inherently flawed, because if they can't pronounce y, or the difference between ć or cz, for instance, imagine explaining it. That's quite a few bucks for a flawed product. Have you checked out this series? Uczmy się polskiego I guess it's not too difficult. Edited by drygramul on 24 May 2014 at 10:55am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6944 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 6 24 May 2014 at 5:48pm | IP Logged | ||
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In addition to the stuff listed above, check out the Polish Profile which has a list of books and links toward the end of the profile.
For free courses, I'd take Oscar Swan's course with most of its audiovisual material and/or the lightweight Oneness Polish. There's another cheap option outside combining used copies of Schenker's “Beginning Polish” and the audio from Yale's archive. You could also combine a second-hand copy of an older edition of Swan's "First Year Polish" with the accompanying audio (in .aiff) from Swan's website. On Michalak-Gray's TY Polish, I used it as a supplement and it worked OK. I would not recommend it as a primary course since not all of the dialogues are recorded and the amount of exercises is inadequate relative to the amount of material that each chapter contains. I think that a better alternative to TY Polish as a primary course is Polish in 4 Weeks I and Polish in 4 Weeks II (I used the second volume for review). Like TY Polish each volume is quite cheap but each chapter introduces only a couple of new points in grammar, and there are consistently 6-10 sets of exercises per chapter. Notwithstanding the silly title (the idea is that if you complete a lesson every day, you'll have spent 28 days or 4 weeks doing so) and that only the dialogues are recorded, you'll have a better grounding than what you'd get from TY Polish on finishing. The dialogues in "Polish in 4 Weeks" form a stripped-down soap opera if you complete both volumes. I found that to be a nice change from the more common technique of the main character being an American or Briton with roots or business interests in the "old country" and using ever more complex grammar and more obscure vocabulary as one works through the course. Barron's "301 Polish Verbs" is a handy guide to conjugating Polish verbs unless you go to Poland where there is a cheaper and denser counterpart available in Saloni's Czasownik polski. I myself got started with Polish using "Cześć, jak się masz?" in a classroom which worked very well, however it is better suited to learning in a class than on your own, even though the answer key covers the drill-like exercises. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ikinaridango Triglot Groupie United Kingdom Joined 5913 days ago 61 posts - 80 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese, Italian Studies: German, Polish | Message 6 of 6 03 June 2014 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | ||
The older of Assimil's two Polish courses is available with German as the teaching language, so you won't have to worry about learning French to make use of it. You may find that your German is already at a high enough level for you to start using it as a base for learning other languages. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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