Chung's HTLAL Polish ProfileI concur that
Chung's HTLAL Polish Profile is an excellent place to start.
Level of DifficultyYou should be aware that the FSI placed Polish in "Category IV" of their Difficulty Ranking, as is the case for the other Slavic languages. Please refer to Chung's HTLAL Polish Profile for more complete information.
Pimsleur PolishAs to
Pimsleur, while I greatly appreciated the learning experience for
German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, I found that the effort required to infer
Polish grammar, decipher the seven case endings, and predict how new verbs would be used, all the while working backwards from the audio recordings -- dictionary, book of verbs, and grammar in hand -- was simply too onerous a task. Thus, I cannot recommend Pimsleur Polish. Yes, others have reported good experiences using Pimsleur with languages that are somewhat removed from English, but that was not my experience.
EDIT: My copy of Pimsleur Polish has
30 Units, as presently displayed on the Simon & Schuster website. I presume that your edition, with only
10 Units, must have been a lower-priced "sampler" that Simon & Schuster marketed at some time in the past with a view to
enticing customers to purchase the more expensive 30-Unit complete programmes. Since the first 10 Units are identical in both courses, Simon & Schuster used to offer a partial rebate on the price of the shorter course to purchasers of the more complete programme. Unfortunately, this rebate was not valid in all sales jurisdictions.
Michel Thomas PolishI also tried
Michel Thomas Polish. While I
greatly appreciated the fact that the course was delivered by a native Polish speaker, as with my previous experiences with the Michel Thomas Method, I did not like being subjected to the poor pronunciation of the students. Also, as in most of the Michel Thomas courses, the explanations of grammar are simplistic and employ non-standard terminology.
Beginning Polish (Volumes 1 & 2) by Alexander M. SchenkerThe
FSI was a co-sponsor of this course and they
adopted it for their own use. The teaching approach is typical for the period; that is, the
intensive repetition of sentence-pattern drills. If you purchase this course (the books are available on Amazon and elsewhere), be sure that you get
both books as the second volume contains exercises supporting the first volume, as well as an extensive Grammar. The
audio recordings (60 hours) are available free-of-charge on the
Yale University website:
http://archive.cls.yale.edu/polish/ If you respond well to the massive repetition of sentence-pattern drills, then this is the course to use. However,
if you respond poorly to drills, then keep looking (the same holds true for the older courses by Oscar E. Swan, below).
First Year Polish, by Oscar E. SwanI am aware that Oscar E. Swan has revised his First Year Polish course and rendered it "somewhat" freely available on the
Pittsburgh University website. However, there are unresolved problems with the files and some of the materials are restricted to the use of registered students. As an alternative, you might wish to consider Professor Swan's textbook
First Year Polish, Second Edition, 1983. The course was written in the "FSI-Basic-style" of the period; that is, example dialogues supported by sentence-pattern drills.
Some of the original audio recordings are freely available on the Pittsburgh University website.
http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu/CDs/FYP-CDs/ However, these sound files include only the examples of the exercise sets and
not the complete set of sentence-pattern drills. You can
purchase a complete set of "re-recorded" audio files, that contains all of the exercise material as well as additional recordings and a set of workbooks designed to accompany Swan textbook from the
Ohio State University Bookstore: https://flpubs.osu.edu/store If you're having difficulty locating the products, try sending an Email to
Lauren Barrett Manager, Foreign Language Publications, flpubs <flpubs@osu.edu>
Intermediate Polish, by Oscar E. SwanOscar E. Swan published this course to follow upon his "First Year Polish" course. The two textbooks, when combined, contain about the same level of material as the Alexander Schenker text. Audio recordings, in the form of a few cassette tapes, were once available to accompany the Intermediate course. However, all of my attempts to locate copies of them, including my appeals to Professor Swan, have been fruitless.
FSI Polish FASTGenerally speaking, the FSI FAST courses were designed to be delivered in a classroom setting over a fairly short period. It would appear that these courses were introduced subsequent to the period when the much more intensive FSI-Basic-style courses were in vogue. The FSI FAST courses represent something of a "stop-gap" measure in language-learning. They are rather cursory and the course books do not provide much in the way of explanatory notes or exercise materials. Given the nature of the materials, I would begin with the Alexander Schenker course and I would reserve the FSI Polish FAST course for dessert. Still, if you decide to use this course as your main instructional method, I suggest that you purchase
Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar, by Oscar E. Swan to complement the course notes.
Assimil Le PolonaisIf your French is up to the task, you might consider
Assimil Le Polonais in conjunction with a Polish Grammar and a Book of Verbs. However, in my opinion, this would be the "hard way" of approaching this language and you might wish to reserve Assimil Polish for practice material once you have gained a solid footing in the language. Then again, you
could use these materials in conjunction with "Living Language Spoken World Polish" per my comments below.
Living Language Spoken World PolishRandom House continues to offer this concise, content-rich course. The teaching approach is identical to that of their former "Ultimate Beginners-Intermediate" series of language courses. The course book is accompanied by 6 audio CDs (be sure you know what you're ordering, as the book and CDs are also sold separately). The dialogues are delivered at near-native-speaker-speed. The "Spoken World" series offers a very solid introduction to the basics of the target language. The only complaint that I have with these courses is that, apart from the dialogues, they do not include very much in the way of exercise materials. For this reason, were I to choose this particular course, I would combine it with Assimil Le Polonais.
Routledge Colloquial PolishGenerally speaking, the Routledge Colloquial courses are what-I-would-call "tourist speak" courses. That is, they tend to focus on the basic transactional situations and vocabulary that a traveller might encounter during a brief visit to the region where the language is commonly used; that is, barely A1 Level. Some of their courses, and this is the case for Colloquial Polish, provide a slightly more in-depth coverage of the target language with the potential of taking the student towards an A2 Level. However, in my opinion, despite their "good effort" with this course, Routledge's decision to include only 2 CDs worth of audio recordings with this course limits its usefulness, particularly given the availability of alternate materials. Still, if you're looking to visit Poland for a very short stay, then this just might suit your needs.
Polish Verbs & Essentials of Grammar, by Oscar E. SwanIt's always nice to have a simple guide on hand and the above-mentioned text is quite useful.
301 Polish Verbs, by Klara JaneckiI rely more on understanding the Rules of Verb Conjugation than I do Books of Verbs. Nonetheless, the above little book can help resolve some questions rather quickly.
Glossika PolishI notice that
Glossika offers a complete set of Polish files. Please note that these 120+ hours of audio-recordings, which are supported by bilingual transcript, are for
practicing the language and that it is assumed that the user has at least an A2 Level grasp of the language and is familiar with the grammar. Apart from the transcript, there are no other supporting notes. Opinions on Glossika vary. However, there seems to be a consensus that the chief benefit is an opportunity to develop/improve automaticity. So, while this is
not a place to
start learning Polish, it might represent a
mid-term goal.
Ciao for now!