Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

Polish update

I may have mentioned that my beginning Polish class meets only once a week, for 3 ½ hours Tuesday nights, unlike the usual beginning language classes, which meet every day. It’s tidy for one’s schedule, but really throws a lot of responsibility on the student to practice every day in order to build pattern skills and vocabulary.

Also, I may have mentioned that we have several “native speakers” in the class, undergrads who grew up speaking Polish with relatives. At first I was really bummed out because of the relative (ha ha) advantage they have. But now I see that in general their knowledge of structural grammar is so shaky that the playing field is immediately leveled. While they fret about translating the present progressive or present emphatic incorrectly (one size fits all in Polish, as in French, German and Italian), I’m murmuring patterns like a mantra. In short, we all have our strengths and weaknesses and doubtless the class is better for it. Although I can’t understand when Prof P babbles on at length in Polish with them, I’m hearing it and trying to understand, which is valuable even if I only get a few words. I believe that if I can continue my present approach of working nearly every day for about an hour, I will do well in the class.

However, I also think that that true fluency will take much longer than I anticipated last year when I was planning all of this. The best I’ll be able to hope for next summer, I think, is basic knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. I am thinking that an intensive course THERE might be useful – but then what about B? And could I really study intensively while at the same time conducting dissertation research? Doubtful.

Lots of questions. Meanwhile, I should be reading several articles for a class that meets at 10 am tomorrow. So, do widzenia, na razie.