Polish in 4 Weeks: An Intensive Course in Basic Polish

This is awful for someone who has ZERO knowledge of the Polish language whatsoever. As the book states it is suitable for beginners, I would expect the voices on either the PC cd or the Audio cd to AT THE VERY LEAST pronounce the alphabet for me so I have SOME idea of how to pronounce the letters / words ! The alphabet is listed in the book, with Polish phonetics, but sadly the English comparisons are not listed, therefore I can READ Polish words on how the letters supposed to be pronounced (in Polish!) but I cannot listen... It is still day one..so therefore this language is still very daunting. I do speak 3 languages fluently so am not averse to foreign languages / pronunciations but on first inspection I would say this course is for people who already know a little of the Polish language. I will persevere, but only because I know a Polish family and will be able to use in conjunction with their help, but as a stand alone product, I'm not convinced yet....

Great book, but ignore the title (18/18 people found this helpful)

I used this book while living in Poland and would highly recommend it. While it's far from perfect, it's a good rounded introduction for anyone new to the language and for my money is better than "Colloquial Polish". However, anyone who completes this book in four weeks is either very good at acquiring language or will just plain forgot a lot of the language points in here. I covered it at a pace of about one lesson a week, letting the language and grammar from that lesson soak in over the week, where I would try and use it as much as possible. Admittedly, if I hadn't been living in Poland at the time I may have approached the course slightly differently, but I think this book offers more than the intensive basic grounding in the language that its title suggests, and should therefore be studied over a longer period to allow oneself to come to terms with the finer points.

I would definitely recommend using this book alongside an additional verb book. I used 301 Polish Verbs, which is simply incredible. While "Polish in 4 Weeks" can be a bit sketchy on a few grammar points (particularly the future tenses), 301 Verbs offers easy to understand conjugations and examples and helped me make a lot of progress in the language. Having said that, 301 Verbs would make little sense if you weren't using a book like "4 Weeks" together with it.

The vocab section in "4 Weeks" is fairly decent for lower level Polish, although after three months I got a large-ish dictionary to help boost my vocabulary further. The listening element is one of the best parts of this course as Polish people speak quite quickly and tend to roll words into one-another (in real life, even if not always on the early lessons on the cd) and if you're anything like me you will need a lot of listening practice in comparison to reading, writing and speaking practice, in order to keep the four elements at about the same level.

After only 9 months studying the language I am intermediate level and now regularly send emails in Polish to friends in the country. I also had few problems travelling round the country and getting by in various situations - a lot of which is down to this book. Highly recommended, but you should definitely get a verb book to use in tandem.

Good for beginners (15/15 people found this helpful)

It is a very good starting point for beginners in Polish as it is easy to follow. It is also good for self-study although for pronounciation, the dialogues on CD will probably not be sufficient. Don't be fooled in believing that you will learn Polish in 4 weeks. There is just too much information to digest to learn the language in 4 weeks. The accompanying CD only contains dialogues but the book contains small lessons with accompanying vocabulary, explanations for the grammar, exercises, etc. The dialogue in each lesson is interesting and useful for everyday situations. This makes it interesting to learn.

The best Polish language book around for beginners (28/28 people found this helpful)

Unlike many other books on the Polish language this one is easy to follow. It presents you with small, easily digestible chunks of information without weighing you down with grammatical terminology.

Don't let it's relatively small size fool you, there is a lot of information in this book and it will give you a very good grounding in REALISTIC usage of the Polish language.

The title is a little optimistic in my view, or maybe I'm just stupid, and the suggested pace of 1 lesson per day will be difficult to keep to if you hope to remember all that has been taught. This is especially true as you progress beyond the initial lessons.

The only drawback to this excellent book is the rather brief section on the alphabet and pronunciation, this isn't a major problem though as you will get the hang of pronunciation from the conversations on the CD.

Overall, this is the easiest book to follow that I've found and is the only one that I would bother buying if I were starting again from scratch.

Polish in 4 Weeks: An Intensive Course in Basic Polish

M. Kowalska

Reader Reviews:

Not good for absolute beginners... (0/0 people found this helpful)

Great book, but ignore the title (18/18 people found this helpful)

Good for beginners (15/15 people found this helpful)

The best Polish language book around for beginners (28/28 people found this helpful)

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