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Exposure in highly inflected languages | ||
Tags: Polish | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Advice Center |  | |
| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5336 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes  Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 1 of 6 27 April 2011 at 3:50pm | IP Logged |
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Hello everyone,
I'm still on my way on bringing my Polish to the next level. I'm now somewhere around B2 (self-evaluated), with listening being more around B1. I read a lot and try to watch more TV shows etc., but I'm not sure how to deal with all those inflections. (For example, the form for "both" can be in Polish something like "obydwa, obydwie, obydwaj, obydwu, obydwóch", and that's still not all forms possible...) In fact, the problem is that first, there are more forms to retain, and second, there's less exposure to each form. How do you guys deal with that problem? Do you use other methods for (rote?) learning those forms? Or do you think it's all a matter of enough exposure with native material? By now, I have a quite good passive understanding whenever I encounter one of those forms, but I'm still far from reproducing the right form when I try to actively use the language. Any advice is, as always, greatly appreciated. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| rlf1810 Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6149 days ago 122 posts - 173 votes Speaks: English*, German, Slovak | Message 2 of 6 27 April 2011 at 4:01pm | IP Logged |
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My experience with Slovak taught me that drills are an invaluable tool for getting those cases down. The important thing is to find drills that aren't just rote repetition or flashcard style memorization, but those that force you to manipulate the forms yourself in a variety of contexts. I'm guessing that Oscar Swan's Polish course is drill intensive, as his Slovak book is.
Outside of that, I've found reading to be another very effective way of learning them. The exposure is critical and while you won't notice quick progress like with drilling, it's a lot more fun to do. What it really comes down to in the end though is how often you practice. Find a native speaker if you haven't already and work out a plan whereby you have a set amount of time where the native speaker corrects all your inflection mistakes, then repeat the sentence in the correct form. Don't do this all the time though! You need time to develop fluency as well as accuracy. Viel Glück! -Robert 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Haukilahti Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4773 days ago 94 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Polish | Message 3 of 6 27 April 2011 at 8:09pm | IP Logged |
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If you are really B2, studying some grammar - those tables - is good, even by rote memorization. I don't usually learn by heart, but spending a few hours on the tables I found in, for example, Hurra po polsku!, was invaluable.
Polish doesn't have a too complicated (*) case system - usually for each "gender" you have two main possibilities, depending on the last consonant of the root being "soft" or "hard". Everything is more or less logical. Some cases - locative being the classical example - cause a consonant change, but it is predictable and "logical", if you think how it came to be. Besides many cases have the same forms, so you don't have to learn 14 times the same word. (*) numbers ARE complicated, and I include in "numbers" also the words for "both". P.S. How did you self-evaluate your level, if I may ask? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Declan1991 Tetraglot Senior Member Ireland Joined 6248 days ago 233 posts - 359 votes Speaks: English*, German, Irish, French | Message 4 of 6 28 April 2011 at 1:56am | IP Logged |
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I found sample sentences useful. I would come across a good example of a few cases in a sentence, learn it, practice it a bit, and then after a while the pattern became automatic. I found it particularly for syntax in German, and for cases with various prepositions, but also found it useful in more inflecting languages like Latin.
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| B-Tina Tetraglot Senior Member Germany dragonsallaroun Joined 5336 days ago 123 posts - 218 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Polish | Message 5 of 6 28 April 2011 at 12:48pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks everyone for the advice! I think I'll go for some grammar tables once again and maybe add some more example sentences from my grammar books to my long-time neglected Anki...
Haukilahti: There is a Self-Assessment Grid available at http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/LanguageSelfAssessmentGrid /en I took the B 1 certificate in 2009, after which I spent 4 months in Poland (but admittedly, I didn't learn much of the language there). Afterwards I continued studying 1-2 hours a day and attended classes at the slavonic institute of my university. By now I can comfortably read novels by Stieg Larsson in Polish, and talking or writing in Polish isn't much of a big deal anymore - but of course, there's still plenty of room to improve :) Edited by B-Tina on 28 April 2011 at 12:49pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Haukilahti Triglot Groupie Finland Joined 4773 days ago 94 posts - 126 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Polish | Message 6 of 6 28 April 2011 at 1:01pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for that, B-Tina.
I found example exams for B1, B2 and C2 (see here: http://certyfikatpolski.pl ), but as there's only one for each kind, I don't want to "waste" it until I feel I'm ready for it. The only other "proficiency test" I found is the one at transparent.com ( http://www.transparent.com/learn-polish/proficiency-test.htm l ) but it's nothing scientific - and it seems every time I retake it I get worse results... 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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