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Problems for learners in PolandIt is a fact generally known that students of different nationalities encounter different problems while learning english. These are mainly based on the differences in grammar and pronunciation, especially when their first language is of completely different origins than english, as well as they are associated with the differences in mentality of nations which approach the tenses and the boundaries between them in particular to their cultures manners. Using my own experience, but also having spoken with other Poles who have learnt this international language, I have come to pick three main grammar issues which are a big barrier in language learning for the speakers of my language. The main problems for us seem to be the definite and indefinite articles, countable and uncountable nouns and the perfect tenses- both simple and continuous. Both the indefinite ?a?/?an? and the definite ?the? are incomprehensible to the speakers of Slavic languages as they simply do not exist in their own grammar. It is important to notice that one of the characteristics of Eastern languages is the lack of words which do not have a meaning, like in this case the articles, which although carrying a message about the nouns they are followed by, they do not mean anything on their own. Thus, the Polish tend to get confused while seeing words which do not have a meaning and therefore they very often do not see the point of using them at all, moreover feeling no natural need of using them as the British/Americans do. Other problematic grammar issue is the ?countability? and ?uncountability? of different nouns in Polish and in english. It is very often tricky that english nouns which tend to be completely countable in Polish are uncountable in english and thus can be used either very generally or with a defining them noun, e.g. advice- which in Polish is countable and can be described as ?one advice? or ?two advices? is uncountable in english this becomes either general ?advice? or a version which for the Poles seems veritably abstract ?a piece of advice.? There are difficulties also amongst the tenses which have very different patterns in Polish and english. The Polish grammar pattern is very firm in terms whether a tense belongs to the past, present, or future. This makes the english perfect tenses hardly comprehensible to the Poles. In fact it seems to me, that people of my nation cannot understand the perfect tenses, as it looks like in our mentality they just cannot exist. The only way for the Poles to learn them is not memorize them and get used to their use in english as they surely cannot be translated directly into Polish, Russian, or any other known to me Slavic language. Their incomprehensibility seems based on their capacity of existing at the same time in e.g. present and past like present perfect, past but even further past like in past perfect, or what is actually completely incredible looking at it through the prism of Polish grammar- in the future and past like in the future perfect. Therefore I venture to judge that Polish learners? of english main problems are based on the differences in grammar of the two languages and associated with the language?s grammar particular to our national way of thinking. It seems to me that to teach a beginner or intermediate group of Poles one has to know not only english but also the Polish grammar, otherwise from a native english speaker?s perspective it is impossible to notice the Polish students? difficulties in comprehending these abstract to them grammar issues. It is very hard for us to imagine something being both past and future or giving somebody just ?a piece? of advice, or when to add to a noun a word that means nothing and when we should not do so. Hence the only way for the Poles to learn english grammar seems to me learning it from a scratch, as if we never had our own grammar or any comprehension of it. The students need to try behave like children; trusting the teacher and taking for granted everything they are told.
