I am looking for bilingual books in Polish and English that also have an audio track available either as a purchase or "free" public read-along on youtube for example.
The paper book or ebook would have Polish on one page and English on the other page. Some words may be in colored or bold print if they have the exact same meaning.
The audio track is listened to while reading. Anything that is not understood can be read in English and an additional Pol-Eng dictionary can be consulted.
A bilingual ebook may be best for quick copy and paste of words into an online or offline dictionary and other tools.
I found this Italian-English youtube video as an example: youtube.com/watch?v=KBR4NYbERYI
This method can be used at any level of language skill and in my case I need to expand my vocabulary and reading skills. Even if you are limited with your communication with people for whatever reason you still need to be able to read and engage with signs, paperwork and digital platforms to complete many basic life tasks, so the self-learning read and listen method can be helpful if you don't have a teacher or want to bother people in public with questions that they may not even know the answer to or even want to answer anyway.
I will update this thread if I find any titles or sections in a book store. So far I have found many Polish paper and ebooks with their audiobook versions, but not a bilingual edition with English translation. A workaround is to purchase two separate paper or ebooks in each language if a translation is available.
You can also find many "free" ebooks and audiobooks, here are a few examples:
As a foreign language teacher, I caution against the down side of bilingual education for adults learning a second language. While it can be useful while learning to see the trot in one's native language right alongside the language being learned, in my experience, this can also serve as a crutch which can actually slow down instead of speed up the learning process. When the mother tongue has been removed and the learner is then forced to communicate in their "new" language, frequently they can become tongue tied and rely more and more on their first language, gradually losing idiomatic control of the language they are trying to acquire. The result is that the learner will be looking for someone to constantly feed them the words in English, or whatever their native language and the new language will never become a reality for them.
The best and only way to learn the "new" language is by staying away from foreigners. Step 2: Drop the old one ASAP and especially before your first child is born and never look back.
I've taught college level German to US students for nearly twenty-five years and find that source language texts prove more valuable in the long run, often frustrating as they can be in the beginning for reasons which I stated.
If Poles all learn English as you do, I shouldn't be at all surprised LOL Truly knowing a language goes way beyond merely the idiom, the slang, the grammar or the vocab, Ironside!
The reason your English is workaday fluent, yet will never be native, is precisely because your language breathes, bleeds your Polish mother tongue.
Such passionately, blithely unbridled arrogance bordering, indeed often exceeding, pure nastiness in my direction, reveals little of the more space giving Anglo-American, the irony which allows the other bloke the benefit of the doubt, even if you hate their guts.
Conversely, my Polish will probably always be stymied by the mere fact that I by nature tend to hold back my unbridled passions and am usually quick to compliment rather than insult, indeed will apologize instead of keeping up the attacks.
Back to the thread of bilingual education, again, having taught German for umpteen years, learning to translate only serves to satisfy the momentary need to "understand" a spoken utterance, yet in the end doesn't allow the student to express themselves independently in the target language.
However, monolingual texts or readings w/accompanying dialogues in the language being acquired must be supplemented exclusively with visuals in order to make clear what the learner is learning in a language not their own. The danger is that the learner simply learns to translate into their native tongue instead of learning the language they wish to know.
Otherwise, it can be an exercise in frustration, that's obvious.
@Novichok, and everybody needs English?? I see you haven't kept up with the news of late, but Germany has been the number one migrant hot spot in Europe for the last ten years and counting!
If Germans all knew, at least spoke, English as though they were educated native American English speakers, you might have a small point. However, nothing could be further from the truth.
True.I studied it for two years, useful but not needed.
and everybody needs English??
I'm afraid that they do, which is why every country in the world is teaching it as a second language.....French was very strong once but English has beaten it to a pulp,
@Rich, you missed the humor, the complete armchair security in knowing that your Dutch conversation partner was as sure of his English as a native speaker, as well as being armed with the knowledge that that partner was naturally, conventionally expressing, rather than approximating, their feelings only in order to prove a point!!
Doesn't it sort of gall you when people of any age substitute an f-bomb for a perfectly respectable English vocabulary word, merely in order to sound "cool"?
Bugs the bejesus out of me, that's for dang sure.
As I said at the start of this post, don't you want to know for absolute certain if somebody from a another country's yankin' yer chains? What better way than by knowing their language.
Your circle of conversation partners is growing ever smaller, I see. Obviously, you are lexically or maybe DISlexically challenged, as the words I used and use in all of my English-language posts are plain to anyone who graduated from a decent US high school, forget even about college or university:-)
