Has anybody used Hurra Po Polsku for teaching/learning Polish? The book and workbook get thumbs up from the reviews I've read, but it's unclear about whether it's strictly written in Polish or if it has English explanations in it as well. This is what people complain about.
I'm using it now. It's okay but the fact that the instructions are in Polish and there's no translation for the things is kind of annoying. Also it leaves out certain words in the grammar section which forces you to write on the actual book. I don't have any Polish language coursebooks to compare it to but from learning other languages, it's just a typical coursebook. I think they're basically all the same. I don't really like learning from course books I find it boring but I have to for the classes i'm taking.
It's kind of slowing me down actually. The grammar is explained so badly I think.
I'm only on A1, yeah it's good for vocabulary, I just don't like the way it presents grammar. Is the grammar presented better in the A2 one? Have you got the workbook? I think I'll buy it next week.
I'm gonna buy a grammar book anyway so don't really care about it but it hurts my head trying to understand what they mean.
It's not exactly a doddle with a (very good and very patient) teacher. But then Polish has been pretty much custom designed to be all but impossible for outsiders to master.
Personally, after 20 years here, the number of foreigners here that I've met who can pass for Poles in conversation (i.e. have mastered the language) is zero. But maybe the experiences of others is different. I'm sure that when I use a public facility, such as a restroom, I speak good enough Polish to pass as a local.
But there are a lot of threads on this site, and excellent they are too.
Books I use:
Polska po polsku/Wrobel/Interpress 1986 Mowimy po polsku/Bisko/Karolak/Poliglota 1966 Colloquial Polish/Mazur/Routledge 1983 Lets Learn Polish/Bastgen/Wiedza Powszechna 1978 Przygoda z gramatyka/Pyzik/Universitas 2000 A Handbook of Polish pronunciation/Puppel et al/Panstowe Wydawnictwo 1977 Porozmawiajmy po polsku/Awolski/Wydawnictwo Polonia 1989 Polish in 4 weeks/ Kowalska/Wydawnictwo Rea/2008 Teach yourself Polish/Corbridge-Patkaniowska/Hodder and Stoughton 1988Contemport polsi hrammar/ Oscar Swan/Slawica/ 2002 Hurrah po polsku Malolepsza/Prolog 2006 Polski, krok po kroku/Stempek et al/Glossa
Again I have lessons with Pani Iza and she's extremely long suffering and resigned to having my zlotys contributing to her university years.
Now I must learn some vocabulary to be able to talk about the refugee crises and to dismiss her fears about Islam taking over the world (more verbiage required!)
So note to the OP from way back........learn the rubric/instructions, and Hurra Po Polsku is one of the most learner friendly books I have come across - at least far easier than the older ( more traditional approach) textbooks that I have given as a mini bibliography.
Barring someone with a speech defect or learnng impediment, that is because mostly they have eschewed, lack the circumstances or never even considered the one sure-fire method: total immersion. That means essentially cutting oneself off from one's native tongue and fraternising largely or exclusively with natives. Many expats seek out opportunities to jabber away in English with their Anglo-mates, and that is counter-productive from a langauge-learning standpoint.
To some extent that can be achieved at the Berlitz School which provides 6 hours or more of total immersion a day where it is forbidden to speak English even duing lunch. But it is rather pricey from what I've heard.
Definitely. BTW how would you translate świetlica: after-school club, youth club, day room, day-care room, televiswion recreation room... If it was in an old people's home it could harldy be called a youth or after-school club.
One word I have repeatedly had trouble with is wychowanie and derivatives. Szkoła powinna nie tylko uczyć ale przede wszystkim wychowywać (rear, raise, upbring, train, eduate???) Nie powinniśmy zaniedbywać pracy wychowawczej. (?) Wychowawca klasy is something like a home-room teacher in the US - is there a British equivalent? Are you familiar with "Difficult words in Polish-Enlgish translation" (PWN 1998)? Fairly good as far as it goes but lacks wychowanie for one.
It's a very difficult one to translate, because you also get (for example) świetlica socjoterapeutyczna which also doesn't translate too well. I suppose "recreation room" could work, but that doesn't really explain what it is. "Common room" is another possibility - but not really.
Wychowawca klasy is something like a home-room teacher in the US - is there a British equivalent?
Form teacher in England, but class tutor in Scotland (and the two are not the same thing - ours just check attendance in the morning, with pastoral duties being handled by specialist teachers). I think wychowawca and form teacher are more or less identical, though.
Are you familiar with "Difficult words in Polish-Enlgish translation" (PWN 1998)
No, I'm not, but thank you for the heads up - I'll try and find a copy here in the university library.
There are 2 titles used for teaching Polish as a foreign language nowadays - Hurra! Po polsku 1-3 and Polski krok po kroku. They are both designed as course books - meaning you actually need to have a teacher who can help you to work with them. Both are very nicely organised and pictured but written entirely in Polish which may cause problems for complete beginners learning all by themselves. However, from my 13-year long experience as a Polish teacher here in London I'd say that there are no better course books for group courses (or individual lessons with a teacher).
If you're looking for something written in simple English check out Polish for Dummies.
I'd say that there are no better course books for group courses (or individual lessons with a teacher).
There must be something better available in the US surely for teenagers of Polish extraction there?
Both these books (Hurra and Krok na kroku) are average at best. Where is the role playing and the pronunciation exercises such as in the English File series for TEFL? Hopeless methodology really and culture bound in that way (no discussion points - only reading and writing, with very limited listening exercises).
This book is not good. Just works well for teachers who are interested in spend time to make more money. There is plenty of better Polish textbooks than this one.
There's a problem in Poland, all schools use the same books. Very few people are interested in learning Polish, that is the main reason teachers don't publish better course books, like it happens in other languages. If you want to learn English there are tons of books. Not the same to Polish language. I hated this book. They put me in a class full of mediocre students, and the teachers used to speak English in the class most of time.
All that may well change as Poland takes on an ever greater role in the EU! Poland is, next to Spain and France, the third largest country on the European continent, not including millions of Polish citizens living and working abroad.
It has a population, still largely non-English speaking, as compared with France, Germany among others, nonetheless eager and willing to take part in the larger European workforce.
Learning Polish will thus become of immense importance in the not too distant future.
Looks fairly interactive to me as a foreigner, Pan Zbigniew:-) I used two Polish-language textbooks with listening component, the more recent being "Wsrod Polakow" (1999). Although I was learning one-on-one with a Polish native speaker, I regreted only the lack of more authentic material in Polish, instead of translated excerpts in often somewhat fractured EnglishLOL
As I can now vaguely recollect, there is or was a series with different cover colors. I believe it was "Mowimy po polsku" or somewhere in that series, but it was a paperback edition with a dark blue jacket and was an advanced text/"primer".
There's another such book, also all in Polish, (doubtless reprinted numerous times, or maybe by now long out of print) entitled "Brak mi slow", which had countless tips for vocabulary building, with exercises, but no CD.
