First Polish Reader for beginners bilingual for speakers of English: First Polish dual-language Reader for speakers of English with bi-directional ... incl. audiofiles for beginners: Volume 1 (Polish) Paperback – 30 Oct 2010

What this book sets out to do is praiseworthy. There is definitely a need for a text book that encourages learners actually to speak Polish. Unfortunately this publication has serious shortcomings that beginners may find very confusing and misleading.We are working through the reader to improve our spoken Polish and have reached page 32. Sadly, we have already encountered numerous mistakes in both the English and Polish text. Most prevalent is inaccurate translation of Polish into English, which we have so far observed on EVERY page. We suspect that the English text has not been checked by a native English speaker. Mistakes take the form of (a) incorrect words and phrases and (b) inclusion of words that do not appear AT ALL as equivalents in the Polish text. How confusing for the beginners for whom this publication is intended!Bizarrely, there are also mistakes in the Polish text and these are, we feel, more serious as they reduce confidence in the Polish text as a whole. Examples are: (i) "naprzeciw" which is incorrectly spelled as two words and is mistranslated as "in front of" when in fact it is one word and means "opposite to" (ii) "może" (he/she/it can) is incorrectly spelled (homonymously) as "morze" (the sea) (iii) the locative singular of "ulica" (a street) is incorrectly shown as "ulice" rather than "ulicy" (iv) "iść" (to go) is listed as meaning "to head", American slang maybe... but not really English.Having focussed on the textual errors, mention should also be made of the poor audio quality of the associated audio files. Excessive reverberation and background noise on the earlier tracks render them difficult to understand. It seems probable that the recordings were not made in a suitable studio. We have been able, using specialist techniques, to improve intelligibility but many listeners will find these recordings problematic. In addition, the inability of the speaker to articulate the English "th" sound may pose difficulties for non-native English speakers.Having said all of this, we have not found any other publication that has the same, welcome approach as this one. We shall continue to work through the reader in the hope that our spoken Polish will improve in spite of the shortcomings of the publication. Indeed, working back into Polish from the sometimes dubious English gives us an interesting challenge. Additionally, finding mistakes in the Polish text provides a source of perverse pleasure....and, ironically, may sometimes even aid learning.

Polish is a fiendishly difficult language to learn for an Englishman, strange pronunciation and an inflected language alien to the English. I have slowly struggled for a year to learn Polish with the help of Polish friends and have bought most of the Learn to Speak Polish type books off Amazon (not very useful). I am now at the stage where I am beginning to put simple sentences together and make very simple conversation, but my accent and ,which case of the noun or adjective to use, leaves much to be desired. But this reader has come to the rescue and I hope there will be more like it. Firstly, as others have said, it is a reader not a textbook or grammarbook, but together with the audio files from [...] its exactly what I need. Short sentences so that I can identify the parts of speech, because again, as we English are taught very little grammar at school its virgin territory for me. (well as virgin as you are going to find these days. :) )In each chapter the words are used many times and with the English translation beside it you gain confidence reading directly from the Polish. Amazingly ('cos they're free) the audio files are the best I have come across with any book, the Polish lady actually speaks very slowly and clearly, this has not always been my experience, and native Polish speakers with books who think they are speaking slowly,

This is an invaluable resource for the British student of Polish. Reading is an essential part of learning a language and this nicely fills the gap in simple reading material. The use of repetition of vocabulary helps in memorising words in a notoriously difficult language. I recommend this to the Brit committed to learning the language.

I seriously wondered if my snobbery was going to put me off kindle books like this. I.e. Because it's written in a really simplified way, was I going to find it of limited use? Not a bit. It's slightly 'Janet and John' style (English people like me >60 years old will know what I mean by that) forced me to look at each word of a sentence, rather that to only ever being satisfied with getting the gist. In other words, that style was exactly what I needed! My only (small) criticism is that I find myself constantly clicking backwards and forwards over 4 pages to go back to that chapter's dictionary or translation. I would prefer a line by line (Polish, English) style. But that said, I won't let that put me off it and I'll certainly be getting more of them.

For me, it's one of those occasions where , having the book is definitely best. When it comes to languages, I am continually flicking between the dictionary and the main text (and my poor skills on the Kindle seem to let me down here.) Also, the Kindle version tended to split up the Polish from the segregated English sections - which again, necessitated flicking backwards and forwards 4 or 5 pages to do what your eyes do automatically in the larger sized book. That said, I loved the book and wished there were more like them. I loved its simplistic "Janet and John" and "Spot the Dog" style that I grew up learning English with. Who knows, I might actually get to learn (and retain) some Polish through it!!