ENGLISH Tips for POLISH Speakers

Cześć, witam w EngVid! (Hello, and welcome to EngVid!) When learning English, Polish speakers face particular challenges, and I want to address several of them in this lesson. First, we will talk about formality in English and how to use Mr and Mrs. Then, I will give you a list of seven prepositions that are easily confused, and I will teach you their usage. For example, do we say at work or in work? Do we say on the radio or in the radio? We will then move on to proper English intonation. I will demonstrate how to ask questions without sounding overdone. Many Polish speakers feel English questions are spoken with too much stress, so I will address this concern. And lastly, I will show you how to use the articles the, a, and an correctly depending on the word that follows it. After watching this lesson and doing the quiz, I guarantee you will feel much more confident about your English!

For English speaker as a foreign language with some skill in German, is it hard to start learning Polish?

anuchan1988

Hi, i’m native Polish speaker. If you want I can help you. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

marcin95

Hallo Anuchan 1988, Polish is absolutely different language. It is a member of a slavic languages
group, German and Englisch are germanic languages.
They have absolutely dissimilar phonetics, syntax and all the other aspects of the language. Some English I know and who are learning Polish or Russish say, that that is a constant uphill stuggle to learn a slavic language.

adrijana

Got 80℅. Thank you Benjamin. I need more such lessons. <3

Annie

Greetings from Katowice;)

DaRiO77

got 7/10

Diane Uwimana

I got 9/10 and wrong at number nine, I think the ear problem is more correct because of speaking about the ear of Mr. Tom, so please explain to me, thank Benjamin a lot

nguyen van long

Me too :)

marcin95

In the lesson this was explained at 7:07. Benjamin was talking about trains. If we explicitly POINT finger to THE train, we implicitly DEFINE the train. We know exactly about which train we are talking about. Train is defined.
But if we are talking about a train it may be any train coming from any direction. In this case train is UNDEFINED.

But in the sample “Does Tom have an ear problem?” It may appear we are talking about an “ear”, but we are not. We are talking about a “problem”. This “an” is because of the “problem” word. We could say: “Does Tom have a problem?” In this case “a” must be used because of the “p” letter, but still “an” preposition from test sample is because of a “problem” word and not because of an “ear” word.

It may be misleading, but “ear” in this case is not a noun. In this case “ear” is ADJECTIVE. Prepositions “a/an/the” are used in front of NOUNS. In this case it is obvious problem is the noun and ear is adjective. So a/an/the preposition is about “problem” word.

Because we are talking about and ear problem for the FIRST TIME, this problem (not ear) is UNDEFINED. For undefined nouns it must be used a/an.

But if we talk about this PROBLEM for the SECOND TIME this PROBLEM becomes DEFINED. Example: “You know, Tom still has THE ear problem, I was talking to you about yesterday. He never ever listens to anyone.” In this case we know about which PROBLEM we are talking about. So the PROBLEM noun is in this case already DEFINED.

Hope I explained it clearly enough.

rokaly

Yes, you did. Glourious explanation.
Thank you ;)

marcin95

Thanks very much my dear teacher
Benjamain.
polish Topic really very interest points.

Bile98906@gmail.com

Thanks

Maged Mohey

Thanks for you websid and help us,I am from Afghanistan Kabul,I very happy you are my teacher, I need your help my English

Omid Zaki

Got 70/10..thank you

Rapo

thanks, Benjamin

Yunita Stemicima Iba

Hello Benjamin
8/10 So I have to learn my lessons.
Thank you to be my Teacher

NGO YAP

Thank you

Seyyed mohammad taher hosseini

Tanks sir…8 out of 10

Abdul@26

Hi Benjamin, greetings from Poland. A very useful lesson for learners, not only from Eastern Europe. If you’d recorded lessons on the difference in English and American pronunciation, that would be great