Learn Polish Now! 8.0

Rating:
Summary: Most Impressive
Review: Although I'm not a linguist or language teacher, foreign languages are my passion. I've pursued, to varying degree of mastery, successful study of six foreign languages via methods ranging from independent study with books to private tutorials to university classes with language labs. But using computer software is new for me. This Transparent CD-ROM language course blows the other methods out of the water-I can scarcely contain my excitement.

The Transparent course is presented in four modules or "titles": Most Common Words, Survival Phrases, the Polish Family and Discovering Poland. The latter two are actually lengthy articles with video components. You may study the titles in any order you wish and concentrate on any aspect of Polish, whether it be spelling and orthography, grammar and syntax, pronunciation or vocabulary. The program is incredibly flexible and you can customize the titles to reflect your preferences.

If your primary interest is speaking the language, you can concentrate on interactive dialogues (you will need a sound card on your computer) and hide the text. You can even record yourself speaking and compare your pronunciation with that of the speakers in the program. If you want only reading knowledge of Polish, you can hide the sound and video components and read only the text.

If you want full reading and speaking facility, though, this is where the flexibility of this course comes into play. If you get bored memorizing phrases, for example, you can switch over to interactive dialogues or pronunciation exercises. And if you want to test your knowledge, the program offers numerous fun games (unscramble, crossword puzzles, etc.) that you customize as to content-plus you can track your scores to mark your progress.

Not having studied Polish before, I am essentially a beginner. Yet I have already mastered the basics of Polish pronunciation (which is difficult if you haven't studied Slavic languages) and can recognize lots of basic words just by their sound. Having studied Greek and Latin, there wasn't going to be much to stump me grammar-wise about Polish. But Polish grammar is quite complex. For those wishing to explore grammar, there are concise explanations on noun declension, verb conjugation, adverb formation, etc. In the text contained in the titles, the root form of the highlighted word will be shown in a separate box along with, for nouns, the case, number and gender and, for verbs, the person, number, aspect and tense.

This course is intended for beginners or early-intermediate students of Polish. If you studied Polish at a university for two years, you would probably find this course useful only for review or pronunciation practice. If you wish to pursue Polish seriously, you will also want to acquire a good Polish grammar (easy to find) and a good Polish-English dictionary (not so easy to find).