Łatwo ci mówić! Phonetic exercises for Polish learners

Description

Łatwo ci mówić – phonetic exercises for Polish learners

A book by Dr. Katarzyna Bednarska-Adamowicz, Kamila Dembińska, and Agnieszka Małyska entitled “ŁAtwo ci mówić!” is a must for all teachers of Polish as a foreign, second, inherited language, as well as for teachers and lecturers of Polish as a mother tongue in Poland, all who care about the correctness of Polish speech and pronunciation, fans of phonetics, speech therapists, people simply interested in Polish. The textbook shows the words “in action” – in the right place in the phrase and sentence, properly stressed. But these are also disassembled words: into syllables, sounds and letters – which is extremely important, because spelling is necessary for life and in the life of foreigners the more, the more complicated their names, places of birth or residence are, and the more they participate in social life, where they have to remember, write down and understand lots of information. Lots of interesting examples, juxtapositions, and funny ideas make this book an interesting teaching aid. For fans of phonetics and supporters of the thesis about the beauty of the Polish language, I recommend it as great reading for the train, plane, and pillow. They will be even more sensitive to this beauty and richer linguistically. I am here – I have read the book from cover to cover and I will reach for it more than once.

prof. dr hab. Jolanta Tambor

The publication is a treasury of words, sentences, texts, and dialogues filled to the brim with sounds practiced in individual chapters. The authors of the publication were guided by the goal of a communicative approach to pronunciation and to develop didactic material in a natural and global way to improve perception and articulation. Prosody (accent, intonation, rhythm) and voting were not omitted, chapters were focused around the most important sounds and consonant groups, in accordance with the current curricula. All the presented issues have been adapted to various topics, making the use of the publication convenient at various levels of language teaching. The textbook is, therefore, a valuable asset that builds a not quite a large collection of publications devoted to the study of Polish pronunciation for foreigners. It is definitely worth recommending, and in the hands of conscious teachers – after appropriate adjustment of exercises to the needs of a specific group – it can provide regular support for course textbooks. Thanks to bilingual descriptions and recordings, foreigners can also try to educate themselves and make self-correction attempts. There has been no publication on the Polish publishing market that would explain in such an uncomplicated and direct way to JPJO learners how to produce Polish sounds. This comprehensive collection of exercises should therefore be on the shelf of every teacher of Polish as a foreign language.

Dr. Michalina Biernacka