Apprendre le polonais. Remarques théoriques et pratiques à l’attention des étudiants et des enseignants
Teaching and Learning Polish as a Second Language: Theoretical and Practical Remarks for Students and Teachers

Summary/Abstract: The author proposes that teachers of Polish as a foreign language should keep track of the development of contemporary general linguistics. However, in the process they need to focus on the specific problems of Polish while initiating students only into the necessary general linguistic knowledge, using it first and foremost to draw the students’ attention to their own native language, in order to be able to compare it with the second language. An important premise of the proposed method is that when teaching any foreign language we should constantly revisit traditional grammatical theory and terminology. In this way, conflicts resulting from differences between knowledge of one’s national language and a foreign language may be avoided. A specialist in a foreign language should be able to describe it in such a way that people who do not yet know either this language or its respective grammatical terminology are able to build in their minds some representation of it comparable to other languages they already know. Unfortunately, in contemporary general linguistics we do not usually have at our disposal concepts and theories for adequate description of a great variety of languages (except in fields such as phonology and morphology). Therefore, the final and decisive element of successful learning of a foreign language remains the passion and commitment of the learners themselves.

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