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Complete Polish Book/CD Pack (Teach Yourself Languages)
 
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Complete Polish Book/CD Pack (Teach Yourself Languages) (Paperback)

by Nigel Gotteri (Author), Joanna Michalak-Gray (Author)
2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Teach Yourself Books (15 Jan 2004)
  • Language English, Polish
  • ISBN-10: 0340870893
  • ISBN-13: 978-0340870891
  • Product Dimensions: 22.2 x 16.6 x 5 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 345,853 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in this category:

    #9 in  Books > Languages > By Language > Other European Languages > Polish > Audiovisual & Multimedia

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  • See Complete Table of Contents

Product Description

Product Description

Polish is the state language of the Polish Republic. It is a member of the western sub-group of the Slavonic languages, a family which includes Bulgarian, Russian, Ukranian and other languages. As well as nearly 40 million speakers in Poland itself, Polish is spoken by an estimated 10 million Poles abroad. This book is intended to help you progress quickly from the basics to understanding, speaking and writing Polish. Twenty thematic units increase in complexity, as they move from dealing with everyday situations to talking about the past and making plans. The emphasis is on communication throughout, with important language structures introduced through dialogues in each unit. These build up to give you a command of the essential phrases necessary for a trip to Poland. Exercises are included so that you can practice the language as it is introduced, and tips throughout should help with the grammar. Aspects of life in Poland are also detailed to give a context to the language.

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Average Customer Review
2.8 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars Recommended, but audio is gappy, 3 Mar 2007
By Mr. I. Bondar (Brum, U.K.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Do not mistake this book for a crash-course for a complete beginner in languages. It is somewhere between an all-round language book and a guide: you can find only dialogues and accompanying grammar with practices in the lessons, i.e. without any continuous text to read and translate. Even the narrative texts in dialogues are in English!

Regarding the CD, it's not really useful. I bought this pack just because of the audio material and I'm not really happy with it. First, I suspect they made a rough transition from an original tape without ever considering the advantages of the CD format. Thus it's not structured into meaningful and easy-to-navigate parts: you can find each lesson on one separate track on its own, which means you have to forward/rewind it all the time as it were a mere tape. You have to sort this out for yourself. Plus, the audio material seems truncated as there is no audio for all the dialogues and relevant practices. Probably they cut them back for not to go over a 1 CD limit.

As I'm Hungarian, this may sound subjective but a language book should offer more native texts and instructions in the long run, not just dialogues with English instructions around. Having studied a few languages, and having a mother tongue that is agglutinating in its nature like Polish (and unlike English), I do not really find it hard to learn the inflections as set out in the book. The book will give you help in the context. The only thing I find hard is that Slavonic languages are really keen on discriminating between genders, and the book sometimes orientates too much on the dialogues without exact info on the grammar (personal pronouns(!), inflections in simple present tense etc.). Good book nonetheless.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars Awful. Do not buy this book., 6 Nov 2007
I bought this book/CD having had a good experience with another 'Teach Yourself' title (Teach Yourself Japanese). Unfortunately, it seems there is no guiding principle between the publications of these titles and this book has been nothing but an eternal disappointment.

The biggest problem is that the whole thing moves far too fast and lacks any sort of logical structure. For me the whole book can be summed up by a section from the third chapter (out of twenty).

"Genitive forms are used...after negated verbs that take the accusative form (which you study later) when they are not negated"

Now, if this were from a book whose stated intention was an in-depth look at grammar for those who already speak Polish I would understand. However, this quote comes from the same chapter in which the learner is introduced to cardinal numbers for the first time. I'm still struggling to count to ten and I'm being expected to negate the accusative for...or wait...not negate...

At this stage you haven't even learned how to say anything more about yourself than your name! I am an english teacher and if I take a couple of minutes to think about the above quote i can pretty much understand it but, how the authors considered this as important in the third chapter(!) is simply beyond me.

As if this wasn't enough, the CD is quite simply useless. Many of the dialogues ar not included and I would say at least two-thirds of it is taken up by a woman speaking in english. The first dialogue sets the tone. Using four full sentences the scene is set (in english) despite the fact that everything spoken is written down in the book anyway before we are treated to a whole...six words of Polish. Fantastic.

Of course, later dialogues are longer but these merely introduce problems of their own. In this format of language book usually the 'new vocab' boxes after dialogues get shorter as the student becomes used to the common vocab being used. This is done deliberately so the student becomes familiar and confident with everyday terms and structures. Not so here. Instead 'new vocab' boxes often include 90% + of the words in the dialogue. This practice continues throughout the book leaving the learner feeling lost, overwhelmed and bewildered.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars messy layout, 6 Aug 2006
This is a really good book. It starts off at a steady pace and progresses to good knoledge of the subject. It differs slightly to other books in the range as vocabulary is often not fitting to the unit being revised and it muddled up. I found pronunciation quite messy and not as set-out properly compared to alternate titles. I found this book good use, but I would not reccomend it to a complete language beginner. Only consider this if you have studied any other language before.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Not exactly for "beginners"
I only own the book so cannot really comment on the CD but given the fact that there are now many native Polish speakers residing in the UK, you hardly need to shell out for... Read more
Published 22 months ago by JR Anderson

4.0 out of 5 stars A good, comprehensive guide
I feel that the earlier reviews of this book are a little unfair. Admittedly, if you are looking for a quick-fix guide for going on holiday, this is probably not the book for you,... Read more
Published on 13 Nov 2006 by Clare Nettleton

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