Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.
Title: Spoken World
Subtitle: Polish
Author: Living Language
Narrator: uncredited
Format: Original Recording
Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
Language: English
Release date: 05-07-09
Publisher: Living Language
Ratings: 3 of 5 out of 1 votes
Genres: Language Instruction, Other Languages
Publisher's Summary:
This simple and effective introduction to Polish teaches everything one needs to speak, understand, read, and write in Polish. This program assumes no background in the language, and it explains each new concept clearly with plenty of examples, making it ideal for beginners or anyone who wants a thorough review.
(P)2009 Living Language
Members Reviews:
Much better than Teach Yourself or Colloquial versions of same language
I am currently a beginner independently learning Polish with this text and two others (Teach Yourself Polish and Colloquial Polish). I have to admit that Spoken World: Polish, despite being only over a dozen lessons, is far better, in my opinion, than the other two in terms of dialogues, grammar explanations, readings, and useful exercises. I recommend Spoken World first and foremost over the other two.
Included in the course are six audio CD's and a textbook. Don't let the textbook's rather small-looking size fool you: It is full of the best appendices (verb conjugations and aspect, and, most importantly, as is critical in any Slavic language, a boatload of nouns in all the declension patterns), dialogues, and exercises I have seen. I don't consider myself to be unable to learn languages (I speak French and German fluently, and I'm learning Hungarian now), but with a language like Polish (even with my minor in Russian), you need a very thorough and clearly written text to even begin to penetrate the difficulty of Polish pronunciation and grammar. It is because of those mentioned appendices and the rather clear grammar explanations that led me to give high marks to this course package. In fact, I particularly like how the grammar topics are introduced with examples from the previous dialogues.
More often than not, language books will introduce a topic and illustrate the topic with a sentence that may (or may not) be disparately related to the dialogues or readings. This book introduces a topic (e.g. the instrumental case) and brings in examples directly from the dialogue you read when the lesson began (e.g. I am a student in your class). Another nice addition in each chapter is a reading passage (separate from the dialogue). These are rather short (ca. 100 to 200 words) passages written in full-blown, grammatical Polish, with a translation to follow. I found these to be invaluable as they helped me to utilize all the grammar topics introduced in that chapter. The exercises look like they are short and rather easy to complete. In fact, they are rather challenging (at least for me), and they require a good deal of effort. The audio CD's are fabulous. There are three to use for 'at home' with the text dialogue in front of you, and three for 'on the go' to be used without the text. The latter are great because they present not just the chapter's dialogue, but also explanations of grammar topics, examples of these topics, and even exercises.
The only main draw back is the glossary in the back of the book. It is not very extensive in that some words used in exercises do not appear in the glossary. I found this to be a little frustrating, and, hence, the reason I voted four, instead of five, stars.