Language / Free Polish Lessons On-line, looking for websites? [14]

Wow! Authors of e-marketing handbooks should use this conversation....The name of the chapter: Brand advocates. Common mistakes to be avoided.
Perfect example!
Lesson to remember: People are not dumb.

Language / Polish Language classes - what do your lessons look like? [21]

That was not my point...Since I didn't notice all the mistakes you pointed out here, I assumed that I (and other English learners) must sound as unnatural as frdalloway. I simply didn't know that English native speakers are so perceptive and sensitive about their language...Now I know that you notice all the small details that make us sound like foreigners. It's harder than I thought...and that's all I wanted to say ;)

Language / Polish Language classes - what do your lessons look like? [21]


What a sense of fun... :|



Your perceptiveness is not very encouraging... I've just realized that my English must sound extremely unnatural. You are not as tolerant of our mistakes as I thought :D But it's good to know!

Language / Polish - Absolute Beginner Questions. Study plan. [75]


That's a very good start - words and phrases that can be used in typical, basic and predictable situations. But you even confirmed that you learnt grammar and that it helped you to communicate in simple, everyday situations: learning "ja jestem" "ty jesteś" and "on/ona jest" is learning grammar...You learnt how to conjugate an irregular verb, and you probably didn't pick this up listening to sitatuonal dialogs but learnt it from a graph...This was probably much faster. But maybe I'm wrong :)

Studying and memorizng rules might be overwhelming and totally unnecessary at any stage, but grammar or some kind of "systematization" of facts can make life easier:) I think it's natural, and it doesn't matter if we are beginners or advanced learners.


Yes, maybe "method" is not the right word here. I just meant that we need to pay attention to different things while learning languages...E.g. in English I need to focus on reading and pronunciation more than in Spanish. In Polish we need to change the form of words, but we don't need to worry about word order, stress or articles :)

And method of learning is a highly individual thing :)

Pozdrawiam

Ania

Language / Polish - Absolute Beginner Questions. Study plan. [75]


Memorizing rules is ineed not a good idea. But trying to understand the rule helps a lot. I think that conscious practice is much more beneficial then thoughtless repeating. Everyone wants to use the language automatically, but words and phrases are used in various contexts and in completely different forms...It's good to be aware of that. Fluency will come anyway.

Polish is not difficult - it's just different from English and learning it might require different methods.

Language / Polish - Absolute Beginner Questions. Study plan. [75]


I cannot agree with that. Stories for children might seem to be easy, but they're not. They might contain quite complicated grammatical structres and advanced vocabulary. What is more, this vocabulary can be completely useless for adult beginners - diminutive forms and archaisms are not good things to start with. The fact that the subjects are easy, doesn't mean that the language is easy as well :)

Beginners should start with vocabulary that can be used for everyday communication. Read, listen and repeat simple, situational dialogs. I also don't believe that we can avoid learning grammar. Unfortunately, we are not children anymore....And Polish is not English - some things will never be picked up naturally or it might last ages! It's better to rationalize the fact that we need to conjugate verbs then try to find this out from context. The effect will be the same, but the first way is much faster. As I said, we are not children, so it's better to use our intellect then wait for the intuition to do the work for us :) Some basics will simply make the whole process easier.

And one more thing - don't learn the language "in silence". Read aloud, talk to yourself and find someone to give you some feedback. Don't read about Polish alphabet, but listen and repeat single words and phrases with the same sound. And ask someone if your pronunciation is comprehensible enough.

Otherwise, you will not have enough self-confidence to use the things you learnt in practice. Self-study books can be good to revise information, but they tend to be over-packed with theory. So be careful with that.

Pozdrawiam
Ania

Language / Polish Accusative / Genitive case [20]


Yes, I agree that instrumental is good to start with. It's easier because doesn't involve "żywotne" and "nieżywotne". But I also agree that it's not as useful as accusative, genetive or locative - the structure S+to be+Instrumetal can sometimes be replaced with S+to+Nominative. However, instrumental is also used with preposition "z", and phrases like "ryba z frytkami", "herbata z cytryną" or "wódka z sokiem" might be useful in everyday life :)

Jay,
I am new to this forum and cannot send you an e-mail or paste a link to sendspace, but maybe you can contact me. I found some exercises, there are not many of them but I hope you will find them useful. There is no key (I made it for class purposes), but you can always ask if you have any problems. I'll let you know if I find more. Please send me an e-mail and I will send you the document.

Pozdrawiam
Ania