Customer Reviews

Polish, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Polish with Pimsleur Language Programs

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this comprehensive Pimsleur after having little to no success with Teach yourself Polish book and CD and Colloquial Polish book, cd and cassettes. I found that the later two, while inexpensive, were too difficult for an absolute beginner, such as myself, with no idea of Polish pronunciation or how to read and say the written words.

The Pimsleur, while very expensive, will definately have you speaking and understanding the language. Each lesson consists of thirty minutes of audio to listen and repeat. By the end of the series of 30 lessons, I am able to communicate simple needs in Polish, such as where to find places, simple directions, paying for items; and to engage in simple conversations such as how many children do you have, where do you live, where do you work, what to eat, drink, etc. I'm also able to to communicate what time it is, and how to communicate when I don't understand what someone is saying in Polish.

The main thing missing from the Pimsleur program, in my opinion, is the lack of written materials. There is a small book included with the alphabet and pronunciation guide, but that is not enough to make the leap to actually reading or even recognizing the written form of the words you are speaking in Polish. The other drawback is that once you finish the Comprehensive Polish, there is no next level to go on to with Pimsleur. I am left at this place where I can converse somewhat, but I cannot read or write any Polish.

Overall, I would rate Pimsleur Comprehensive Polish I as excellent for developing basic pronunciation and conversation skills. Currently I'm searching for the next step. If anyone else out there knows any useful programs to follow Pimsleur maybe they can post them.

If what you’re looking for is a purely audio-based Polish course this is it. I used it to learn Polish while commuting to work in my car.

The course is both very fast and very slow. It’s very fast in that the Polish words, phrases and example conversations are spoken at full speed so you need sharp ears to keep up, and the expectation is for you to reply at full speed too. In practice, until you really get the words coming automatically, you will have to pause the CD to give yourself time to think, but that’s OK. The advantage is that it does get you used to hearing and talking at full speed. The exception is when a new word is introduced when it does get said slowly, syllable by syllable, but after that it’s at full tilt. Generally this works well, though I did find the Polish for ‘something to eat’ a big of a tongue twister and had to repeat that lesson before I got it.

However, the overall pace of the course is fairly slow, mainly because they do all the repetition for you, e.g. the first 10 minutes of each 30 minute lesson is a revision of the stuff from the previous lesson. This means that you won’t want to listen to each lesson more than once, or maybe twice (not if you value your sanity). However, all this does mean that you really do get the stuff drummed into you and find the words tripping off your tongue nicely. (I think the course is partly aimed at corporate customers. If you want your employee to learn Polish, you can get them to do the course, and after they’ve worked through the 32 lessons you can be fairly sure that they will have learnt the material).

Overall the course is well structured introducing useful words and phrases in a logical order. There’s no discussion of ‘grammar’ (cases declensions and that sort of stuff) but they do make sure you understand what all the words in each phrase mean so that you not just saying phrases parrot fashion, but learn to be able to construct you own sentences.

Given that Polish is such a difficult language to get started with (few familiar words, difficult to pronounce, highly inflected and irregular grammar) these CD’s give you a useful toehold. If you enjoy learning tables of declensions and conjugations and irregular endings then fine, but if your eyes glaze over at this sort of thing then this course if a good place to get started. Then if you want to seriously get to grips with Polish you can move on to something else. (There no Pimsleur Intermediate Polish course).

The net effect is that you get to learn a small amount of useful Polish very well, such that you feel confident about using it. The course is expensive, but you probably won’t want to listen to it again, so why not sell it on when you’ve finished with it and recoup some of the cost?

Gripes: There’s no written version of the materials. While learning aurally is fine, knowing how words are spelled gives you another handle on remembering them, and with Polish you need all the help you can get. Also there’s no good way of quickly revising the material since you wouldn’t want to have to listen through the whole lot all over again.

Having used the Michel Thomas Spanish course it was interesting to compare the two approaches. Michel Thomas also does pure audio courses, but not a Polish one (otherwise I would have bought it). Michel Thomas crams a lot more material onto each CD’s than Pimsleur so you do need to go over them several times to really learn the stuff, which is fine. Like Pimsleur he carefully builds up language constructs so you develop the ability to construct you own sentences. He does a lot more explaining of grammar (without resorting to declension tables etc.) and when if comes to pronunciation he tells you exactly which bits of the pronunciation really matter. Pimsleur relies on pure listen and repeat which is fine if you’ve got a good ear but might mean you’re getting some important detail consistently wrong. Overall Thomas feels more fun, while Pimsleur is a bit of a slog. I think the Pimsleur stuff has stuck better, but that maybe because the Pimsleur approach forces you to spend a lot of time on each bit of material, and if I’d spent the corresponding amount of time on the Thomas CD’s I’d have remembered it just as well.

An absolutely outstanding program for beginning Polish. Prof. Pimsleur has outdone himself. While it certainly will not make you a fluent speaker, completing the CD's before travelling to Poland allowed me to order in a restaurant, carry out transactions at my hotel, go sightseeing on my own, and interact with my business colleagues on a basic level. I already speak Spanish and Japanese and have a small understanding of Mandarin, French, and Croatian. I have discovered Polish to be the hardest language I have yet encountered. (Although similar to Croatian, Polish pronounciation is more difficult) I'm glad I started my studies with Pimsleur. Having dipped my feet into the language and having interacted with the Polish people, I've decided to continue my studies of this amazing language and culture. Thank you Pimsleur. 5 stars +++++++!!!

I have been trying to learn Polish off and on for years and found this to be, by far, the most helpful product available. For me anyways, Polish words are so foreign and so difficult to pronounce that classes have always gone too fast and I was not able to wrap my brain around the strange mix of syllables.

These tapes go over word pronunciation on a syllable-by-syllable basis that makes it easy to learn and remember the words. I did find myself listening to the tapes again and again to make sure I had everything correctly.

I finally made my trip to Poland last month and did find the words I had learned in these tapes very helpful. I only wish there were more tapes in the Polish series!

Clearly the place to start for conversational Polish. Each 25-30 minute lesson fits nicely into the daily commute. If you are serious about learning Polish, bite the bullet and purchase Comprehensive. If not sure, start with the Conversational for a test drive. Pimsleur is excellent for developing the sounding and flow of the language, and my new-found Polish colleagues were impressed. Repetition incorporates the language into your usable memory. The program does not come with a reference book and you will occasionally find it difficult to decide what letter you're trying to sound out in the words. Purchase a good dictionary and you'll be OK. At the end of Comprehensive you'll be able to perform simple tasks, but your vocabulary will be extremely limited. The audio courses available from other manufacturers do not fit into the American educational style. They can be used following Comprehensive to increase vocabulary. An excellent supplement for written (and audio Polish) is the First Year Polish course, available online at the Univ Pittsburgh.

The Pimsleur Polish CDs are the absolute simplest way to learn to speak Polish HANDS DOWN. That's saying a lot, since Polish is one of the harder languages (harder than German for example). When I took several years of German in college, I learned all the correct grammar using a textbook; but you know what, I still couldn't speak much of anything, and now remember very little. When speaking, you simply don't have time to think about the correct gender, case, declension, etc. While you are thinking about such things, the other person is five sentences beyond you already!!! Speaking needs to be trained so that it is automatic, not based on thinking. Isn't being able to speak the language, usually the real reason you learn it? After all, when you are a kid, you don't learn grammar until you already know how to speak. Speak first, grammar later.

That's what you get with Pimsleur. A pure audio learning course, for someone with NO experience in the language whatsoever. When new words are introduced, they are introduced slowly . . . syllable by syllable . . . by native speakers. After the word is built and practiced, it is then spoken at full speed after that. Repetition is designed to make it automatic, so you don't have to think and you can build up speed.

Some critics here have pointed out that they repeat some basic phrases too often, but actually I think it is a tactic to give you a little break when learning some new phrase . . . and to distract you so you start to forget the new phrase, and then they can ask you the new phrase again to reinforce it. In some later lessons, some sentences seem too complicated and long, but I think the point is to get you to understand how to construct sentences. Conversation doesn't shift from man's perspective too often in the early lessons, mainly because the sentence structure is actually different from a woman's point of view (crazy Polish language!), and it would be too confusing otherwise (so this is actually a plus I think, not a negative).

NOTE: All the Polish CDs on Amazon by Pimsleur are, in fact, the same; you just get a different total number of lessons. You get 30 of them with Comprehensive I ( Polish, Comprehensive: Learn to Speak and Understand Polish with Pimsleur Language Programs ).

Quick & Simple ( Polish, Q&S: Learn to Speak and Understand Polish with Pimsleur Language Programs ), Basic ( Polish, Basic: Learn to Speak and Understand Polish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Simon & Schuster's Pimsleur) ), and Conversational ( Polish, Conversational: Learn to Speak and Understand Polish with Pimsleur Language Programs (Pimsleur Instant Conversation) ) are just the first 8, 10, and 16 lessons respectively of Comprehensive I.

If you know you really want to learn a lot of the language, just buy the Comprehensive I; however, if you are unsure, you can buy one of the smaller sets . . . good news is that if you do that and later decide on Comprehensive I, you can buy at a rebate that's included in the smaller set purchase.

No Comprehensive II yet (as of June 2011), but they will make it eventually if enough people buy Comprehensive I and pester the Pimsleur publishers via email about making it. Until then, supplement what you've learned with Michel Thomas Polish Beginning ( Michel Thomas Method' Polish For Beginners, 8-CD Program (Michel Thomas Series) ) & Advanced ( Michel Thomas Method Polish Advanced, 4-CD Program (Michel Thomas Series) ) and/or Rosetta Stone Polish ( Rosetta Stone Polish Level 1-3 Set ).

I have tried many different language programs over the years and Pimsleur is hands-down the very best. I bought Pimsleur's Italian 2 years ago to prep for a trip to Italy and, within a month, I learned enough to get around with ease and was able to carry on a decent conversation with the locals. The Polish language is a little more difficult to master, but YOU CAN'T NOT LEARN it with Pimsleur. Seriously folks, don't even bother looking at other programs.

Learning of my Polish heritage I searched for a reasonbably priced internet delivered course to learn the language. There were a few to choose from but Pimsleur's is the best! The conversations I learnt are useful. The constant repetition allowed me to recall the expressions when needed. I used the down loaded files mainly on my Android mobile, both on train rides and in the car. Native Polish speakers can understand me! I highly reecommend this course for anyone who wants to speak and underastand some Polish language.

I have not compared this product to its comptetors, so I cannot judge how good it is realative to them.

However, in itself, it is not a useful introduction to Polish. Both I and another visitor to Poland had used it before our trips and found it inappropriate.
Pimsleur spends a great deal of time on very complex sentences ("Where, madam, would you like to get something to eat?" - which in Polish is a much longer and very tonue-twisting sentence), but does NOT teach such fundamental basics as:

- My name is ...
- How much is?
- US consolate.
- How far is?
- How do I .... ?
- Nice to meet you.
- I'm from...
- Where are you from?
- What do you do for a living?
- Do you like .....?
- Is ... safe/good/reliable/trustworthy/usual cost, etc?
- This is my wife (daughter, son, etc)
- I am going to .... (Warsaw, etc)
- What do I need to declare?
- I am a (doctor, teacher, etc)
- Taxi, train station, bus station, subway,
- North, south, east, west

In fact, our joke was that the program might better be named the PIMPsler program, because so many of the lessons were given to such dialogues as:

"Madam, would you like to get a drink?..... At my hotel?"
"No."
"Then would you like to get a drink at a restaurant?"
"No."
"Then, Madam, may I buy you something?"

If you were a travelling letch interested in dealing with an escort service, these might be appropriate. For a family trying to find their way around, the content was unhelpful and counterproductive.