First Polish Reader for beginners bilingual for speakers of English: First Polish dual-language Reader for speakers of English with bi-directional ... beginners (Graded Polish Readers) (Volume 1)

A good, basic reader, beginning at the "run Spot run" level, which is also available on Kindle; what's not to like? It gradually progresses to more advanced vocabulary; only wish that it had available audio, since I find pronunciation to be one of the most difficult aspects of the language. Without audio, English speakers will tend to end up learning two different languages when studying Polish, one written and the other spoken. Joining the two is extremely difficult, even with audio, but is nearly impossible without it. Like most busy people, I find myself able to dedicate much more time to the audio (while driving) than to the written studies. Several of Amazon's Polish learning titles have audio CD's, including "Colloquial Polish" and Hippocrene Introductory Polish, both of which are also very good, but not available on Kindle. I also wish that Amazon could publish a good Polish/English dictionary in the Kindle format. In the case of the Kindle English only Oxford Dictionary, the device does a great job of automatically linking to the dictionary definition if you simply click on any word. Such automatic links to a bilingual dictionary would be a dream come true for anyone trying to learn any foreign language. Kindle also has great potential for replacing many of the extremely expensive "talking translators" which are currently available at great savings, both in terms of cost and in the amount of weight in your suitcase while you are traveling abroad.

Seems like a useful tool, glad I bought it, but was under the impression this was a workbook, with fill in the blanks and translate parts of it yourself. It isn't, it's completely reading. Not mad, just going to need to put in extra work now.

For the learner of Polish who has mastered the declensions and conjugations, and who has some idea of the aspectual system, but who still has a rather small vocabulary, this book is perfect. Each lesson contains a word list of 30 or 40 items and a short reading. The readings are in two columns, Polish on the left and English on the right. Even though the English translation is occasionally not exactly literal, it is very welcome to have it there for immediate checking against the Polish. There are no grammatical notes – or even indications in the word lists – so the reader is expected to know enough to infer the grammatical information. At the end of the book are Polish–English and English–Polish vocabularies, but some items in the texts are missing from them. There is an occasional typo in the book, for example, on page 34 morze instead of może.

This book is a good idea. I've been studying numerous languages for years and I've tried different methods of learning with mixed results. Regular textbook courses I found highly unnatural and no one likes having to memorize grammatical rules. Meanwhile, trying to read news articles and books to pick up new vocabulary becomes a burden, as you end up having to constantly look up new words. This book is wonderful in that it introduces words to you in simply texts while allowing you to learn grammatical rules (declensions) through natural exposure. Here is the thing though... not all the words are listed in the vocabulary lists at the beginning of each chapter nor are they in the glossary in the back. You will have to rely on the translations to understand the meaning of these words. It doesn't help that those omitted words tend to be some of the more difficult words that you will come across. Also, there are far too many typos and occasional mis-translations in both the Polish text and the English translations. Learners beware! This book is a phenomenal idea and it's one of the best (among the few that I'm found) bilingual readers available in learning Polish. I want to buy the second volume but I just wish the author would have proofread through the book to correct any errors.

Unlike when I was learning French, many, many years ago, there is not much out there in Polish for beginners to read. I had lots of easy, interesting, bi-lingual readers in French but, up until now, I could not find any in Polish. I was so excited when I received this; it is wonderful, very well thought out for the English speaker just learning Polish or someone having to brush up. I enjoy reading in the new language I am learning and being able to read the same story translated into English. For me, it is extremely helpful as a tool to learn to read and write the new language. I hope there will be more like this!

It is nice to see Polish in common sentences that I might be using. I have travel books, but wanted something that dealt with daily life and this gives common sentences that I can apply and change to fit my needs.

I am working my way through this excellent book, along with Polish Phrasebook (Collins Gem) and both are very helpful in learning the language of my grandparents. Both books will be useful and fun for anyone planning to visit Poland or simply learn more about this remarkable country and its people.

As a beginner with the Polish language, and had enough vocabulary to start with this book. I quickly started with the first story and it was great to be able to read and translate the stories. Thing was it already started with errors. I'm not aware if there is another edition to this book but the one I have looks exactly the same as in the photo. The first error I found was instead of Mike has a dog , they called it Robert has a dog. Fair enough. I can cross out the word Mike and add Robert. The 2nd story had more issues with sentences saying Mike jest z USA. It was Robert again and USA was pronounced wrong along with the word Amerykaninem( I'm not sure what was said, but it was neither of those two words. The third story the same with the same word. I looked it up on Google translate and they were saying something else and not that word. Then the story goes on and it stops before the last two paragraphs of the story. So it was left unfinished. I'm going to have to contact the company , and see if I get a response but I'll still go through the book. Just note that the translation may not be the same on the audio. So be aware you may have to look words up. It's a bit frustrating for a beginner to have to find mistakes and weed them out. I get mistakes happen, but I've encountered several now and if you're just starting out will definitely cause a bit of frustration.

I would say you need a year or two of Polish before attempting to tackle this book. As a totally green beginner it will not work for you; I tried.

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,[[still speak a little too quickly and too legato and so run the words together making correct pronunciation of each word difficult. I just wish I had discovered this book six months ago. I do hope more are produced. And with 29 chapters there is, for once, a lot of material in this type of book.ASIN:1456302590 First Polish Reader for Beginners Bilingual for Speakers of English]]

As an "oldie" who learned languages in the traditional way at school, I found the style of this book reassuring. The reader's knowledge is built up steadily and carefully through frequent repetition. However this never becomes boring. In fact the book consists simply of a series of chapters with all the vocabulary provided at the beginning,followed by a number of sentences using that vocabulary, and a translation at the end of the chapter. The content is interesting and keeps one's attention. This is a good book to use on your own - many first language books seem as if they are really intended to use in a teaching group with extra re-inforcement exercises provided by a teacher. As the title suggests, it's a reader, which gives practice in Polish - to learn to speak the language and chat to others you would need other books as well. I found this a useful and helpful book and would recommend it to others.

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.

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.