Opinions about '2 weeks intensive Polish course'

Hey;

Anyone has an informed opinion about the '2 weeks intensive Polish course' format?

I've been studying Polish so far from books and online courses ('Polish in 4 weeks' book, Rosetta Stone etc.). My level is very basic since it's hard for me to muster the discipline to learn in an orderly fashion. I currently have very minimal vocabulary and almost zero grammar.

I saw a 2 weeks course offered by UJ Krakow, as well as some other schools (e.g. Prolog, etc). I figured it's a good place to get a better foundation, I might move on to longer courses if I see it does me well.

Opinions, sharing your experience appreciated.

Cheers
Groovyg

I have no experiance in such courses, but it sounds very suspicious. 2 weeks is definitely too short to learn anything.

Cinek

Each day of a two week course covers the material typically covered in one week using a "normal" semester as a frame of reference. This means 2 hour-and-a-half sessions per day. So in two weeks one covers the material typically covered in 10 weeks.

These courses are not inexpensive.

There is a sequence of 9 two week sessions and then one can also enroll in private lessons for further study.

I participated in such a course this summer and I recommend it. Of course you have to study quite a lot, but if you want to know the language you should :-)

I was in Glossa School in Krakow and we used "Polski Krok po Kroku" book, written by the teachers from that school. If you want to check out the book, here are some extracts: polskikrokpokroku.pl

For me very helpful was being with Poles for a while, pub evenings organised by the school and staying with Polish family.
Have fun with Polish!

Thanks for all the replies.

Obviously I don't except to learn the language in 2 weeks, just get a more organized foundation so I can expand it by myself later. I guess I would give it a try, will write my impression once done.. :)

If you can afford it, I do recommend taking the challenge of such a course. :)
I spent a fortnight at the summer school of the Catholic Uni of Lublin two years ago.

Their homepage: kul.pl/school,art_8284.html
The School of Polish Language and Culture, see "Programs for 2010/2011" for prices. They have semi-intensive / intensive / highly-intensive courses for up to 8 weeks.

And you can read my 'impression' here: greenvault.tvn.hu/lublin/

(Sorry for any non-working links, if any.)

Thanks Bondi but alas, I'm in Krakow not in Lublin..

You will need much more than a 2 week course.

I took a 6 week course at UJ in Krakow three summers ago. I think the teaching was good, but I wouldn't stay in the dorms again. It's developed somewhat of a "party school" reputation for the summer course. I have heard from other students who went to UJ previously that the course offered by the Catholic University of Lublin is better and is the best option for serious students.

I definitely agree. I would say that the 2-week course can be a good introduction to your learning process.
I stayed in Poland for a month - 2 weeks on a course in Cracow, and 2 weeks travelling around Poland, which also helped me to acquire a lot of vocabulary.

We had a poster here, a bright and young American fella who bragged he would learn Polish in 30 days. After a little more than that someone asked him about the progress. He claimed some distractions made him change the schedule a little, but he still insisted he would make it.

I think it was some 2 years go. We haven't heard from him in a while, in Polish or English.

2 weeks to learn Polish sounds like a very blatant scam.

Just to update, I took the 2 weeks course and it was worth it in my opinion. It gave me some basics and a lot of orientation for self study which is exactly what I wanted. They covered a lot of material in condensed way ('intensive' is definitely a good description). The teacher was dedicated and quite enthusiastic.

To recap, if the above is what you're looking for, then it does deliver.

What ideas did you get for studying on your own?

Did they have any exercises that you found particularly useful?

Has anyone else been to one of these 2 week intensive courses? How did you find it?

Are they worth the money?

Polish is very nice language and gets you into slavic perspective.

I took a 3 week intensive course in Warsaw at IKO. It was great. It was my 4th Polish class and my only intensive. It was tough though. The amount of stuff we learned was the same as a full time course but we attended 5 days a week for about 4-5 hours if I recall correctly.

Was this better than just getting Polish lessons regularly? Because of the other students did you find that you didn't speak as much Polish as you would have liked? Did they speak a lot of English?

We were discouraged from speaking English. This was also my third or fourth level, so I knew quite a lot. I would not want an intensive for my first.

We were able to speak to each other in English during the breaks. Also thr groups were small, like 5 people maybe. Ideal really.

Thanks dhrynio

I don't think they mean that you'll be fluent after two weeks... I think it's more of an introductory course.

In Prolog you get a test first, a written test and a speaking test(maybe that is oral but maybe aural test, I am not sure). Then you are placed in a group of the same level so you don't necessarily have to be in an introductory course.

But they certainly don't mean that you'll be fluent in 2 weeks. It's to give you the basics or to improve upon what you already have.

I agree with you 100%.

I have more questions for anyone who has done this course.

Is it more of a holiday or a language course? I supose it depends how interested you are in learning but you can only push things so far, you can't be so intense if everyone is being chilled and having a laugh. Feel free to answer any of the above questions also. Dzięki.

I took the course (see above posts), the course organized the material in a way that I could study more effectively later by myself. Also we made quite a bit of progress within these 2 weeks, and you can once again expand on the topics that were touched by yourself later. Overall I do recommend this format if you can't afford a longer term course.

>> you can't be so intense if everyone is being chilled and having a laugh

No, it's not a holiday course, actually some students were Erasmus and the exam at the end counted towards their grade so they weren't 'chilled'. Others were foreigners who work now in Poland and want to get a grasp of Polish (they didn't care about the exam but it doesn't mean they were slowing down the course). This wasn't a 'party all night and learn a few polish words during the day' course. It is what it says - '2 weeks intensive Polish course'.

Overall this format was useful for me and I want to take higher level intensive course sometime this year again.

Hi Groovyg, thanks for your reply, it is great to get someone's opinion about what a 2 week intensive course is like.

What school did you choose in the end? Prolog, Accent or another one?

Many thanks.

Merged: Polish intensive course for foreigners in Kraków

We have just started 3 weeks intensive Polish Course with 2hr meetings from Monday to Friday: Mon, Wed, Fri 18:30-20:30 & Tue, Thur 17:30-19:30.
If you would like to join there is 35% discount for last minute booking: office@pff-warsaw.com. The classes take place at Krakowskie Przedmiescie Street in the city center.

Hope to see you!

Merged: 2 week Polish language course - any experience?

I'm English, and my spoken Polish is basic, but my friends say my pronunciation is very good.
I'm thinking about enrolling on a 2 week residential course, probably in Sopot.
Due to work, I'm unable to take more time off unfortunately.
My question is - would a 2 week residential Polish course be beneficial, in order for me to fill in the gaps and assist my sentence construction for conversational Polish?

Does anyone know of anyone who has done similar, and can they offer any advice?

The only similar experience I've had was with French. I'd learned French at school bu 20 years had gone by. I had 2 weeks holiday and went to a school in Reims where I struggled - what I recalled put me into a higher stream than what I could actually do.

But total immersion - living with a French family, talking French all day every day - quickly kicked my French up a gear and removed some of my inhibitions. I even found myself thinking in French.

So immersion can be very effective, not so much for new language/vocab but for consolidation and cnfidence-boosting