Greetings All ...
I am proud to say that I am a graduate of the Polish for Foreigners program at Lodz University. I am happy to tell you what I know and what I remember about the program.
1. The teachers are all professors at the University. In my case, there were two teachers with PhDs and a third was a PhD candidate. At the University they all involved in either teaching Polish or studying the Polish language. I believe I should say that they are all in the faculty of Polish Philology. You would be very hard pressed to find better qualified individuals from whom you could learn Polish.
2. The course I attended was made up of about 12 or 14 individuals, from a total of 8 or 9 different countries, all of whom spoke at least one or two languages in addition to their native language. (One fellow student spoke a total of 8 languages fluently and Polish was to be number 9.) (As an aside, I want to say also that it has been 8 years since I took this program and I still correspond with one of my fellow students regularly and two others infrequently.)
3. Classes meet all day, let's say from 9 to 5, but I can't remember the hours for sure. Everyone there, with one or two student exceptions, including the teachers, spoke at least a little English. So, for the first two days, learning was easy for me. However, starting with day 3, nothing was spoken in the classroom other than Polish.
4. The pace is very fast. The material comes at you very fast. There is no doubt that the intent is to get a student involved to the point where he doesn't even think about learning, he just absorbs everything in the learning environment. The class moves on "without time to pick up the sick and the wounded" as one of my high school teachers used to say.
5. I was there because, at that time, I was serious about relocating to Poland. However, I spoke only English, I had never learned a second language, and I wonder now if this program was the proper one for me. It is not cheap. It is not easy. The programs presents ALL of Polish grammar very early on, I believe that the teachers do that so that the student has something to use to structure his learning. For me, all that did was to create a state of massive uncertainty and confusion. I never recovered from it. I was pretty much lost after that. To this day, I speak Polish with basically nouns, grunts and gestures.
6. I believe that university qualified staff, presenting a language at the university level, and in an extremely scholastic manner, may be good for experienced language learners, and people who want to study a language. But, for me, I believe that I would have learned more usable day-to-day Polish by spending the same amount of time at the Irish Pub or in a lovely little coffee shop called Gado Gado.
In addition, I believe that I made a major language mistake when I decided to live by myself. If at all possible, live with a Polish family. Then, after a year or so of learning to speak Polish using the same method that everyone in Poland has used in learning to speak, THEN you can go to Lodz University and expand on the base of Polish that you have. The presenters of this program have overlooked the fact that Polish people learn to speak Polish in a social environment, and do so over a period of six or seven year before they are introduced to an academic explanation of grammar. To begin to learn a person's second language, and to have that second language be Polish, and to study beginning Polish at the Polish for Foreigners program at Lodz University, will certainly present, if I may I say, and in my humble opinion, ... a challenge of a lifetime.
Should you go there, and should you have a presenter by the name of Gregor, please say hello. Ask him to sit down one day with his guitar and teach you Polish folk songs. That has turned out to be the one part of the program that will stay fresh in my memory as long as I live.
Best wishes to students of Polish everywhere. There are no people on earth for whom I have more respect than people who attempt to speak Polish As A Second Language.
John W
Bloomington, Indiana
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