Poland, Italy, and then back In New York after years abroad

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drp9341
Orange Belt
Posts: 241
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2016 1:21 pm
Location: NY, USA
Languages: Native: English (US)
C1/C2: Spanish, Italian
B2+: Portuguese
B2: French, Polish
A1: Russian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=5978
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Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby drp9341 » Sun Oct 08, 2017 1:35 pm

wow. It's been a long time since I've updated this language log. I'm still studying Polish though :D


Less than a week after getting back to Poland from my trip to the Ukraine, I went back to NYC for 2 weeks for one of my best friends weddings. When I was there I didn't speak Polish at all. I watched one Polish movie, but watched it for pleasure with English subs and that was all.

When I came back to Poland however, we stayed at my girlfriends family's house for 4 days, and went to a wedding. I was completely shocked with my Polish. I was speaking extremely well, (even when I wasn't indulging in vodka at the wedding.)

It was like the 2 weeks away had somehow fermented the Polish that was in my head, it was a very weird experience. I was able to talk to everyone socially without making many mistakes or searching for words. I understood WAY more than I understood before I went back to the US, and because of this was able to feel 100% comfortable in conversations. It was very strange how this happened.

I moved to Warsaw 2 weeks ago, and since then haven't been forced to speak Polish daily. Although I do use Polish whenever I go out, and whenever it's possible. I have been studying, still (~2 hours a day, maybe more, maybe less certain days.) I am worried that my skills are going to decrease however.

One thing that worries me is that almost everyone my age (24) speaks English very well, and are very eager to practice their English in social situations. I'm hoping to improve my Polish quickly so my relationships don't fall into the trap of being English only, (although it may already be too late.)

I started reading Harry Potter the other day, and I don't know, on average, about 12 words a page. I am continuing to put lots of wrods and sentences into Anki, however I'm honestly getting bored of Anki.

I really love Anki and it's the most useful program for me in my situation, however I can't help the fact that I'm getting so tired of it. I can't do it for more than 10 minutes at a time without finding an excuse to do something else, (like writing this post, for example,) which kind of scares me. I don't know what will happen if I stop using Anki.

For example, Anki helps with remembering the small details, the details that I wont get corrected through speaking or listening, like saying "Dużo ludzie," instead of "Dużo ludzi." If I was speaking I couldn't hear the difference, which would probably cause that error to become fossilized. Since Polish grammar is so tricky, I'm trying to nip all my errors at the bud by using Anki instead of fixing them when I feel "B2-C1" but I'm actually not, because when I speak, I have grammar like a 6 year old.

I've seen this happen to people here who speak English. They learn English with their boyfriends or girlfriends from Spain or Italy etc. and they speak super fluently and can understand everything, but say things like "Now I must study because in the other way I will not study." or things like "He has right" instead of "He is right." I've worked with people like these teaching them English and getting those fossilized errors to go away takes a LOT more effort than just learning it correctly in the beginning.

I'm thinking of taking an Anki break for like a week maybe, and then see if that helps with my motivation to come back to it. I'll keep everyone updated ;)


[EDIT]

I forgot to talk about my Portuguese revival. So I'm back teaching on iTalki. I forgot how much I used Portuguese on iTalki. This week I had a student who was A1-A2 and needed me to speak Portuguese to explain some things and talk about scheduling, prices etc. I forgot SO MUCH Portuguese. Thankfully, I spent a lot of time replying to students messages and reading, watching some stuff online in Portuguese. I also wrote out some stuff in Portuguese, which really helped. Hopefully it will come back, and hopefully it won't interfere with my learning Polish since I usually have about 2 hours a day of students who prefer that we do some stuff in Portuguese.
2 x

DaveBee
Blue Belt
Posts: 952
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Location: UK
Languages: English (native). French (studying).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7466
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Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby DaveBee » Sun Oct 08, 2017 1:47 pm

drp9341 wrote:Less than a week after getting back to Poland from my trip to the Ukraine, I went back to NYC for 2 weeks for one of my best friends weddings. When I was there I didn't speak Polish at all. I watched one Polish movie, but watched it for pleasure with English subs and that was all.

When I came back to Poland however, we stayed at my girlfriends family's house for 4 days, and went to a wedding. I was completely shocked with my Polish. I was speaking extremely well, (even when I wasn't indulging in vodka at the wedding.)

It was like the 2 weeks away had somehow fermented the Polish that was in my head, it was a very weird experience. I was able to talk to everyone socially without making many mistakes or searching for words. I understood WAY more than I understood before I went back to the US, and because of this was able to feel 100% comfortable in conversations. It was very strange how this happened.
Others have had a similar experience: the 'bow wave phenomenon'.
2 x

drp9341
Orange Belt
Posts: 241
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2016 1:21 pm
Location: NY, USA
Languages: Native: English (US)
C1/C2: Spanish, Italian
B2+: Portuguese
B2: French, Polish
A1: Russian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=5978
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Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby drp9341 » Thu Oct 12, 2017 2:30 pm

Woah! I'm very very happy.

I signed up for a Polish class here in Warsaw, because I was starting to get into a little slump.

They gave me a free trial class and made me take a placement exam.

I took the placement exam and later received the email " Your score is really strong B1."

During the trial class, they put in a B1.1 class (there's B1.1 and B1.2, with B1.2 being higher,) and I felt totally at ease in the class and had no problem keeping up. Even though, my vocabulary isn't quite B1 I don't believe, even if my grammar is.

They don't have any classes for my level in the evening, but they said they might next week, so I'm going to wait. Either way, it's great news to hear from a Polish school that I have a B1 level.

Another funny thing, and not to brag, was that the teacher was shocked I only started studying Polish in June. After the class she even brought me out and introduced me to another teacher and they were asking me tons of questions about how I learned Polish to my current level in such a short time. I guess the answer is Anki and lots of immersion haha.
7 x

DaveBee
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Location: UK
Languages: English (native). French (studying).
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=7466
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Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby DaveBee » Thu Oct 12, 2017 3:04 pm

drp9341 wrote:Woah! I'm very very happy.

They don't have any classes for my level in the evening, but they said they might next week, so I'm going to wait. Either way, it's great news to hear from a Polish school that I have a B1 level.
Well done You. Nice to have an unbiased source give you good marks on your polish skills. :-)

Does the school recommend/use any particular resources?
1 x

drp9341
Orange Belt
Posts: 241
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2016 1:21 pm
Location: NY, USA
Languages: Native: English (US)
C1/C2: Spanish, Italian
B2+: Portuguese
B2: French, Polish
A1: Russian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=5978
x 962

Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby drp9341 » Wed Nov 22, 2017 10:31 am

DaveBee wrote:
drp9341 wrote:Woah! I'm very very happy.

They don't have any classes for my level in the evening, but they said they might next week, so I'm going to wait. Either way, it's great news to hear from a Polish school that I have a B1 level.
Well done You. Nice to have an unbiased source give you good marks on your polish skills. :-)

Does the school recommend/use any particular resources?


We're using the book, "HURRA!!! po polsku 3" it says on the bottom, "propozycja programowa na poziom B1"

The class just started Monday, so I had my first class. The class is entirely in Polish, since most of the students are from either Ukrainian, Russian, or Turkish speakers, most of whom, presumably, do not speak English.

I'm definitely, from what I can tell, one of the most "fluent" in the class, which is very nice. Many of the Ukranian students can understand everything, but every time they try to speak Polish they end up speaking a weird mixture of Ukranian and Polish.

The teacher and administrators talked to me for a while after the class, and asked me how I learned Polish to my level without taking any classes, and were very very surprised that an anglophone, (for lack of a better word,) was actually spending so much time taking Polish classes. I told them I really enjoy studying languages, and that I needed to take a class to give my Polish learning some direction.

Looking back on it, I have taken language classes, at least for one semester at University for all of my fluent languages with the exception of Portuguese. I like language classes, I try to ignore the other students when they speak so I don't copy their mistakes, but taking a class helps me understand the structure of the language better. I don't understand why this works, but when I take a class, I feel like I better understand the way things work on a technical level, and I'm less prone to grammatical or spelling mistakes.

The month of October and half of November I barely studied Polish. I tried, but I just lost my motivation. I got back into dieting and lifting, and spent most of my mental energy focusing on learning more about bodybuilding and dieting, rather than Polish, (I got quite out of shape the last 8 months, even though I don't look it.)

However, the past 8 or 9 days I have been studying Polish very hard. I stopped doing Anki and have been focusing on wordlists instead. I find wordlists are better for memorizing words, and now that I have the phonology of Polish pretty darn cemented into my head, there's no need for me to listen to every single new word 100 times. In the beginning, it was necessary; when I read a new word, I wouldn't be able to recognize it in speech unless I heard it a bunch of times and really really focused on the sounds. Now, however, I can study 20-30 words a day on a wordlist and recognize those words in speech, (on the radio, train, etc.) without every hearing their recordings.

Another thing I'm planning on focusing on for the next 2.5 months is getting better at what I already know. I can understand 85% of everything I read, but I don't actively command all of the verb conjugations and noun declensions. This month I'm really really focusing on those little grammatical things. I was focusing on "familiarizing myself with everything" for the past 6 months, and now it's time for me to "master the basics," so to speak.

It really is amazing how far I've come in such a short time. I can listen to the radio, watch Vlogs on youtube, and talk about anything I want. However, advanced language is still largely incomprehensible without a dictionary and some time to make sense of the weird structures used in Polish literature.

I'm excited to see if I can reach C1 by May 2019. That will mark my 2 years of studying Polish. I think it's possible as long as I stick to what I'm doing.

________________________

Another question I have, (that I might make a new thread about,) is about prepping myself for my next slavic language. I know it's a long way off, but I was thinking about how I bridged from Italian to Spanish, and was thinking I should try something similar for Russian. I'm thinking that I should spend some time, (an hour a week maybe) doing Pimsleur Russian, or Teach Yourself Russian. This way, when I do eventually start Russian, I can hit the ground running, instead of having to take lots of time familiarizing myself with basic vocabulary.

When I started learning Spanish, I already knew a lot of Spanish just from living in NYC my whole life. It wasn't totally foreign. I couldn't put together a sentence, but I knew lots of words, how it was spelled etc.

I already know cyrillic, but I think I might start doing that with Pimsleur if I have time. I also need to spend a good 6 months on my French, which is slowly falling into more like B1 than B2.

I hope you enjoy the long post!
7 x

Theodisce
Orange Belt
Posts: 239
Joined: Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:18 am
Location: Krakauer Baggersee
Languages: Polish (native), speaks: English, Czech, German, Russian, French, Spanish, Italian. Writes in: Latin, Portuguese. Understands: Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Slovak, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Serbian/Croatian. Studies for passive competence in: Romanian, Slovene, Bulgarian.
Language Log: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=1435
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Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby Theodisce » Wed Nov 22, 2017 12:57 pm

Regarding your question about Russian (or any other Slavic language for that matter), I believe that strong Polish passive skills (B2-C1, especially listening) would enable you to learn a lot simply thorough content exposure (with some grammar to clarify more obscure points). That's at least how I have been learning Romance and Slavic languages. BTW, if you are ever going to consider exploring other Slavic languages, Czech is quite content strong (not only when you take into account the relatively smaller population numbers behind the language). Polish and Russian combined make Ukrainian quite transparent and it seems to be another relatively content strong language in the family (perhaps surprisingly, given that it was loosing ground to Russian during the Soviet period).

I enjoyed your remarks about the national composition of your Polish class. Not concentrating on your classmates seems very reasonable. Do you count the hours you put into study and/or exposure? I find it very useful as an indication of my actual language level.
2 x
BCS 400+ : 48 / 50
RUS 2800+ : 74 / 100
SPA 1500+ : 128 / 100
CZE 1900+ : 94 / 50

User avatar
Willow
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Posts: 93
Joined: Fri Dec 23, 2016 12:25 pm
Location: Polska, Kraków
Languages: Русский (N), English, polski, deutsch
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Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby Willow » Wed Nov 22, 2017 5:55 pm

and from what I've heard Russian speakers with no exposure to Ukrainian do not understand it.

I disagree. I understood both languages without previous exposure to them, simply because I was keen on literature and therefore had deeper vocabulary knowledge, than most of russian native speakers. Literary Russian has just tremendous quantity of similarities with Polish, you just need to spend time and think/or keep calm and read, whatever you prefer.
4 x

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Chung
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Joined: Mon Jul 06, 2015 9:39 pm
Languages: SPEAKS: English*, French
STUDIES: Hungarian, Italian, Ukrainian
OTHER: Czech, German, Polish, Slovak
STUDIED: Azeri, BCMS/SC, Estonian, Finnish, Korean, Latin, Northern Saami, Russian, Slovenian, Turkish
DABBLED: Bashkir, Chuvash, Crimean Tatar, Inari Saami, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Meadow Mari, Mongolian, Romanian, Tatar, Turkmen, Tuvan, Uzbek
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Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby Chung » Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:45 pm

drp9341 wrote:
DaveBee wrote:
drp9341 wrote:Woah! I'm very very happy.

They don't have any classes for my level in the evening, but they said they might next week, so I'm going to wait. Either way, it's great news to hear from a Polish school that I have a B1 level.
Well done You. Nice to have an unbiased source give you good marks on your polish skills. :-)

Does the school recommend/use any particular resources?


We're using the book, "HURRA!!! po polsku 3" it says on the bottom, "propozycja programowa na poziom B1"

The class just started Monday, so I had my first class. The class is entirely in Polish, since most of the students are from either Ukrainian, Russian, or Turkish speakers, most of whom, presumably, do not speak English.

I'm definitely, from what I can tell, one of the most "fluent" in the class, which is very nice. Many of the Ukranian students can understand everything, but every time they try to speak Polish they end up speaking a weird mixture of Ukranian and Polish.

The teacher and administrators talked to me for a while after the class, and asked me how I learned Polish to my level without taking any classes, and were very very surprised that an anglophone, (for lack of a better word,) was actually spending so much time taking Polish classes. I told them I really enjoy studying languages, and that I needed to take a class to give my Polish learning some direction.

Looking back on it, I have taken language classes, at least for one semester at University for all of my fluent languages with the exception of Portuguese. I like language classes, I try to ignore the other students when they speak so I don't copy their mistakes, but taking a class helps me understand the structure of the language better. I don't understand why this works, but when I take a class, I feel like I better understand the way things work on a technical level, and I'm less prone to grammatical or spelling mistakes.

The month of October and half of November I barely studied Polish. I tried, but I just lost my motivation. I got back into dieting and lifting, and spent most of my mental energy focusing on learning more about bodybuilding and dieting, rather than Polish, (I got quite out of shape the last 8 months, even though I don't look it.)

However, the past 8 or 9 days I have been studying Polish very hard. I stopped doing Anki and have been focusing on wordlists instead. I find wordlists are better for memorizing words, and now that I have the phonology of Polish pretty darn cemented into my head, there's no need for me to listen to every single new word 100 times. In the beginning, it was necessary; when I read a new word, I wouldn't be able to recognize it in speech unless I heard it a bunch of times and really really focused on the sounds. Now, however, I can study 20-30 words a day on a wordlist and recognize those words in speech, (on the radio, train, etc.) without every hearing their recordings.

Another thing I'm planning on focusing on for the next 2.5 months is getting better at what I already know. I can understand 85% of everything I read, but I don't actively command all of the verb conjugations and noun declensions. This month I'm really really focusing on those little grammatical things. I was focusing on "familiarizing myself with everything" for the past 6 months, and now it's time for me to "master the basics," so to speak.

It really is amazing how far I've come in such a short time. I can listen to the radio, watch Vlogs on youtube, and talk about anything I want. However, advanced language is still largely incomprehensible without a dictionary and some time to make sense of the weird structures used in Polish literature.

I'm excited to see if I can reach C1 by May 2019. That will mark my 2 years of studying Polish. I think it's possible as long as I stick to what I'm doing.

________________________

Another question I have, (that I might make a new thread about,) is about prepping myself for my next slavic language. I know it's a long way off, but I was thinking about how I bridged from Italian to Spanish, and was thinking I should try something similar for Russian. I'm thinking that I should spend some time, (an hour a week maybe) doing Pimsleur Russian, or Teach Yourself Russian. This way, when I do eventually start Russian, I can hit the ground running, instead of having to take lots of time familiarizing myself with basic vocabulary.

When I started learning Spanish, I already knew a lot of Spanish just from living in NYC my whole life. It wasn't totally foreign. I couldn't put together a sentence, but I knew lots of words, how it was spelled etc.

I already know cyrillic, but I think I might start doing that with Pimsleur if I have time. I also need to spend a good 6 months on my French, which is slowly falling into more like B1 than B2.

I hope you enjoy the long post!


I really envy you since it was a long and winding path for me to reach something close to B1 with several short pilgrimages to Poland, and hanging out every now and then with Poles in the interim (which I haven't done as much for the last little while). I never did get a handle on the parts about a dziewczyna or moving to Poland. I would likely have progressed faster and reached a higher level by now in the language.

I've found it helpful to read short stories to maintain if not improve my passive abilities, and reinforce stuff that I've seen before in a textbook. For some reason, the website for the town of Skwierzyna hosts a downloadable .pdf of Oscar Swan's adaptation of Mirosław Żulawski's anthology of short stories Opowieści mojej żony. At the end of the book there's a Polish-English glossary, and Swan feels that these short stories are good for intermediate learners who want an introduction to authentic 20th century Polish writing (as opposed to a translation to Polish) which doesn't unduly strain and bore them. At least it'd be easier than trying to plow through something like 'Chłopi' by Reymont, Nobel Prize notwithstanding.
---

I've recently stumbled upon a freely-downloadable set of practice CEFR exams for Hungarian test-takers by Origó, which includes examples (and answer keys) for the writing and reading questions for B1, B2 and C1 exams for Polish. There are sample CEFR tests with audio and answer keys also available at ECL from A2 to C1. Unlike the sample exams in the first link, the samples in the second link are in Polish, so if you don't understand the instructions, preambles or example answers, your girlfriend could help.

Here's Origó's practice B1 exam for Polish (feladatok in Hungarian) and its answers (megoldások in Hungarian).

If you're curious, you can try this practice B1 exam to see how you could fare at least in reading and writing.

All the instructions in the exam are in Hungarian, so I'll translate them:

1) Reading comprehension - Answer questions in Hungarian (or rather English in your case)

Questions
1) When did the event that Marek is describing happen?
2) Where did Marek spend his summer vacation?
3) How and to where did he want to travel?
4) How was the journey?
5) How did the travelers behave?
6) What did Marek do during the storm?
7) Why was Marek happy when he caught sight of the port?

2) Interpretation / Summarizing

Maria Kowalska is a public school teacher from Warsaw who's organizing a class trip to Budapest. After a preliminary phone call, she's sent an email to your travel office requesting your help in arranging the trip. Unfortunately the email is in Polish, but fortunately for the travel office, you know Polish, and so you summarize the Polish text for your Hungarian colleagues.

(N.B. The numbers in bold show the paragraph/sentence which contains the relevant information/answer. The numbers in parentheses are for marking and hint at the number of details that are relevant to the chart's sub-heading. If you get 20 details then you get the 10 points for this section of the exam.) That (1-4) in the 1st row indicates that there are four details you must include to get the full score. The (5-8) in the second row indicates that there are four details you must include to get the full score. Spoiler: There are only three details here per the answer key, and in the last row about remarks on the nature and content of the reply to Maria Kowalska, there are two details to include, not one. The exam creators screwed these two rows up, but the other rows seem to be in order with their numbers in parentheses)

1. Means of travel
2. City tour
3. Accommodation
4. Rooms
5. Miscellaneous/special services
6. Remark on the nature and content of the reply to Maria Kowalska

3) Writing ability

Length: 8-10 lines
Note: In the interest of privacy, do not include actual personal details when giving your answer!

You are a high school student who's been in Poland for two weeks already this summer. Send an e-mail to your parents with the following points in mind.

1) How was the night train?
2) Were you happy with the accommodation?
3) How much did you like Kraków?
4) You're running low on money. Ask your parents to transfer some to your account.

***

The answer key is also in Hungarian but I'm translating only the 2nd exercise with the table for summarizing the e-mail since it's fairly specific. I think that your girlfriend (or her parents?) could check your answers for the reading comprehension exercise and the e-mail exercise.

2)

1. Means of travel: 45-person bus plus two bus drivers. (4 details/points)
2. City tour: Tour guide who will show the city to the children (3 details/points)
3. Accommodation: Suitable/good accommodation, not too expensive, hotel (preferable), hostel (if necessary) (4 details/points)
4. Rooms: The rooms must fit 3 people/have 3 beds, with bathroom and TV (4 details/points)
5. Special services: internet access, athletic center, park (3 details/points)
6. Nature and content of answer: Maria Kowalska wants an answer about the itinerary soon. (2 details/points)
4 x

drp9341
Orange Belt
Posts: 241
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2016 1:21 pm
Location: NY, USA
Languages: Native: English (US)
C1/C2: Spanish, Italian
B2+: Portuguese
B2: French, Polish
A1: Russian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=5978
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Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby drp9341 » Wed Nov 29, 2017 11:40 am

Chung wrote:
I really envy you since it was a long and winding path for me to reach something close to B1 with several short pilgrimages to Poland, and hanging out every now and then with Poles in the interim (which I haven't done as much for the last little while). I never did get a handle on the parts about a dziewczyna or moving to Poland. I would likely have progressed faster and reached a higher level by now in the language.

I've found it helpful to read short stories to maintain if not improve my passive abilities, and reinforce stuff that I've seen before in a textbook. For some reason, the website for the town of Skwierzyna hosts a downloadable .pdf of Oscar Swan's adaptation of Mirosław Żulawski's anthology of short stories Opowieści mojej żony. At the end of the book there's a Polish-English glossary, and Swan feels that these short stories are good for intermediate learners who want an introduction to authentic 20th century Polish writing (as opposed to a translation to Polish) which doesn't unduly strain and bore them. At least it'd be easier than trying to plow through something like 'Chłopi' by Reymont, Nobel Prize notwithstanding.
---

I've recently stumbled upon a freely-downloadable set of practice CEFR exams for Hungarian test-takers by Origó, which includes examples (and answer keys) for the writing and reading questions for B1, B2 and C1 exams for Polish. There are sample CEFR tests with audio and answer keys also available at ECL from A2 to C1. Unlike the sample exams in the first link, the samples in the second link are in Polish, so if you don't understand the instructions, preambles or example answers, your girlfriend could help.

Here's Origó's practice B1 exam for Polish (feladatok in Hungarian) and its answers (megoldások in Hungarian).

If you're curious, you can try this practice B1 exam to see how you could fare at least in reading and writing.

All the instructions in the exam are in Hungarian, so I'll translate them:

1) Reading comprehension - Answer questions in Hungarian (or rather English in your case)

Questions
1) When did the event that Marek is describing happen?
2) Where did Marek spend his summer vacation?
3) How and to where did he want to travel?
4) How was the journey?
5) How did the travelers behave?
6) What did Marek do during the storm?
7) Why was Marek happy when he caught sight of the port?

2) Interpretation / Summarizing

Maria Kowalska is a public school teacher from Warsaw who's organizing a class trip to Budapest. After a preliminary phone call, she's sent an email to your travel office requesting your help in arranging the trip. Unfortunately the email is in Polish, but fortunately for the travel office, you know Polish, and so you summarize the Polish text for your Hungarian colleagues.

(N.B. The numbers in bold show the paragraph/sentence which contains the relevant information/answer. The numbers in parentheses are for marking and hint at the number of details that are relevant to the chart's sub-heading. If you get 20 details then you get the 10 points for this section of the exam.) That (1-4) in the 1st row indicates that there are four details you must include to get the full score. The (5-8) in the second row indicates that there are four details you must include to get the full score. Spoiler: There are only three details here per the answer key, and in the last row about remarks on the nature and content of the reply to Maria Kowalska, there are two details to include, not one. The exam creators screwed these two rows up, but the other rows seem to be in order with their numbers in parentheses)

1. Means of travel
2. City tour
3. Accommodation
4. Rooms
5. Miscellaneous/special services
6. Remark on the nature and content of the reply to Maria Kowalska

3) Writing ability

Length: 8-10 lines
Note: In the interest of privacy, do not include actual personal details when giving your answer!

You are a high school student who's been in Poland for two weeks already this summer. Send an e-mail to your parents with the following points in mind.

1) How was the night train?
2) Were you happy with the accommodation?
3) How much did you like Kraków?
4) You're running low on money. Ask your parents to transfer some to your account.

***

The answer key is also in Hungarian but I'm translating only the 2nd exercise with the table for summarizing the e-mail since it's fairly specific. I think that your girlfriend (or her parents?) could check your answers for the reading comprehension exercise and the e-mail exercise.

2)

1. Means of travel: 45-person bus plus two bus drivers. (4 details/points)
2. City tour: Tour guide who will show the city to the children (3 details/points)
3. Accommodation: Suitable/good accommodation, not too expensive, hotel (preferable), hostel (if necessary) (4 details/points)
4. Rooms: The rooms must fit 3 people/have 3 beds, with bathroom and TV (4 details/points)
5. Special services: internet access, athletic center, park (3 details/points)
6. Nature and content of answer: Maria Kowalska wants an answer about the itinerary soon. (2 details/points)



Thanks for that Chung, I'm going to check it out when I have time, (maybe today ;) )

Alright, so my main goal, that I want to complete by the end of June 2018, (my one year anniversary learning Polish,) is...
1.) Speak at B2 level.
I want to be able to feel 100% comfortable in any non-technical situation. I know this is a stretch, but I want to be able to speak correctly and understand almost everything people say, as long as they're not talking about something very specific.

In order for me to do this I need to focus on 3 things.
1.) Declensions
2.) Verb Aspects
3.) Vocabulary

I don't have a problem with speaking quickly, and I don't have a problem with listening comprehension at all. Which is very surprising because I absolutely suck at listening comprehension; it's always my weakest skill in every language, (except maybe Portuguese, where it's writing.)

I have tried these things over the last few days:
1. Doing my Anki routine that I've been doing for months, EXCEPT now I look up the declensions for each noun in every sentence and write it down.
2. Reading short stories and writing down all the nouns in the various declensions.
3. WRITING and having my writing get corrected.

I always hate writing, it's something I'm naturally decent at even in my own language, (even if my posts on this site aren't always great proof of this!) so I never really feel the need to practice writing more than twice a month. However, this morning I wrote a post on iTalki, and I looked up lots and lots of stuff as I was writing. I feel that this helped me 300% more than anything else I've done so far. Also, I'm learning how to say things that I want to say. I don't necessarily need to actively know the declensions for words that I never or rarely use, but I should know the declensions for all the words that I need to say. Understanding the declensions are easy, it's using them when you're speaking that's difficult.

For the next week I'm going to write on iTalki once a day, and put all my corrections, and also any phrases I had to look up in order to write correctly, into Anki.

The only difference between learning Polish and learning Spanish is the cases, and the verbal aspects. I understand how these work, it's just an issue of me being able to produce them correctly.

As far as vocabulary, is concerned it's the same as any language, and I am not having any special difficulty with Polish vocabulary anymore. In the beginning it was difficult, but now it's much easier for me to memorize words.

I'll let you guys know how this works. Who knows, maybe intensive writing is the key to breaking out of the intermediate plateau with slavic languages?

if anyone else has any advice for me, I'm totally open.
3 x

drp9341
Orange Belt
Posts: 241
Joined: Tue Mar 29, 2016 1:21 pm
Location: NY, USA
Languages: Native: English (US)
C1/C2: Spanish, Italian
B2+: Portuguese
B2: French, Polish
A1: Russian, German
Language Log: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... =15&t=5978
x 962

Re: Drp9341's Polish (and Italian, French, Spanish & Portuguese!) Log!

Postby drp9341 » Wed Dec 13, 2017 9:11 am

Polish and FRENCH updates this time ;)

So over the weekend I stayed at my girlfriend’s parents’ house for 3 nights.

I spoke Polish the whole time and it was barely an issue. Sure, there’s lots of words I don’t know, but it wasn’t a big issue. I managed to talk all about politics, taxes, etc. All complicated stuff with no English at all. I still make grammar mistakes but I’m getting better.

My strategy for the past 3 weeks is this: only memorize words that I’ve seen a few times already, and focus on learning the declensions of the nouns I already know, and he conjugations of the verbs I already know.

My girlfriend has had her friend over the apartment for the past few nights and she is scared to speak in English. She’s really funny and outgoing however and we’ve been hanging out using only Polish, and I don’t feel like there’s a big issue at all, I can make jokes etc. And there’s rarely a need to use the occasional word in English.

I’ve been continuing to write and READ a lot. I’ve also been paying attention to what I already know, instead of trying to expand into stuff I don’t know. If I see new words, I look them up, try to memorize them for 10-15 seconds, and move on.

In the past month my Polish has really improved. I don’t think I’ve actually learned that much, but I think it’s pretty cemented in my head now, so I can use it quite freely.

FRENCH
I did an instant tutoring lesson in French on iTalki the other day, and it was eye opening. No cases, declensions, tons of familiar vocabulary etc. I was able to talk about whatever I wanted for 30 minutes only making minor mistakes in pronunciation and word choice, (using less common cognates with other Romance languages instead of the words normally used by Francophones.)

Funnily enough, for the whole lesson I kept having to stop myself from speaking Polish. I was about to say “no... tak.” Etc. About 100 times, however I managed to catch myself a millisecond before I spoke the wrong language.

My french skills are odd. I understand written french 100% even most of the idioms and literature etc. but understanding spoken french is only possibly when I really concentrate. If it’s a TV show with scripted dialogue, I’m lost. However, I can write or speak about any topic no matter the complexity - with small errors of course, but not that it hinders comprehension, fortunately.

That’s all!
I’m curious to see how I’ll fare come New Years when I go away on a trip with 6 Poles my age who don’t speak any English. Wish me luck ;)
8 x


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