Intermediate Polish: A Grammar and Workbook

by Dana Bielec

Intermediate Polish is designed for learners who have achieved basic proficiency and wish to progress to more complex language. Each unit combines clear, concise grammar explanations with examples and exercises to help build confidence and fluency.

Features
* focus on areas of particular confusion such as verbs that are difficult to translate and nouns made from numbers
* comprehensive glossary of grammatical terms
* reference list of over 250 Polish verbs
* full key to all exercises.

Suitable for independent learners and students on taught courses, Intermediate Polish , together with its sister volume, Basic Polish , forms a structured course in the essentials of Polish.

Dana Bielec is the author of the popular An Essential Grammar , as well as Basic A Grammar and Workbook , both published by Routledge.

Genres: Language, Polish Literature

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

This workbook – not a textbook in itself – is the follow-up to Routledge’s Basic Polish and has the same format of lessons where some grammatical feature is presented, and then a series of exercises on that feature follow. At the end is a key to the exercises and a vocabulary, though you are now expected to have a proper dictionary at hand, too. Unlike the first book which dealt with noun declension, telling time, etc., the Intermediate Polish workbook is dedicated almost entirely to Polish verbs. It delves deep into the perfective/imperfect distinction, and also presents all the principles.

The concerns of this book largely overlap with the specialized materials for learning how to pass Poland’s official state language exam, so after working through Intermediate Polish the student will be about at the B1 level, at least as far as morphology goes.

The second edition of Basic Polish was rife with typos, but fortunately this Intermediate volume, while it has the occasional mistake, is more reliable.

[Anthony Murawski · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains all Polish characters, contrary to the claim in the one star review

The only other review of this book I have seen to date gives it a one star review, claiming it contains no Polish "accents" (presumably meant to mean letters including but not limited to ą ć ę ł ń ó ś etc. I am using a Kindle Fire 8 (7th generation) purchased in the United States for $60.00 (remarkably, less expensive than a Kindle Paperwhite) and I see all of the Polish characters. I added the Polish keyboard as my secondary keyboard, but I can see the Polish characters regardless of whether the English or Polish keyboard is my active keyboard. The book covers exactly the type of material that seems suitable to me, with a heavy emphasis on inflections.

[Richard Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good resource for improving your Polish. Like most language books it is only useful as a part of a mixture of learning tools. I used this as a book to travel with. It contains 40 relatively short chapters each focused on one topic, with supporting exercises and a few useful annexes. Typically, I would work through one exercise on my commute, and it suited this style of working well. If you are looking for a primary text to learn Polish from, I don't think this works - but it is a very good supporting text.

My main criticism is just the name "intermediate Polish". I am not convinced this is really intermediate level. It might better be called "verbs" as this is much of the focus, whereas the previous sister volume could be called "nouns". Of course, it covers more than verbs, but the majority of the book concerns verbs.