Mówienie bez egzaminu ustnego: spoken Polish in a written qualification

Using only the specification's own figures, work out how the 400 scaled marks are distributed across the papers and across the tasks inside them, and turn that into a defensible allocation for a ten-hour revision week.

1. 01Scale the three papers

   Paper 1 has a maximum raw mark of 85 and a scaling factor of two, giving 170 scaled. Paper 2 has 80 raw and a factor of one, giving 80. Paper 3 has 75 raw and a factor of two, giving 150. Total 400. Expressed as shares of the qualification that is 42.5 per cent, 20 per cent and 37.5 per cent, which is exactly what the specification prints - the scaling exists precisely to produce those weightings from three papers of unequal raw length.

2. 02Break Paper 1 into its three tasks

   Reading and responding is 35 raw marks, the translation into English is 10, and the research-project essay is 40. Doubled, those become 70, 20 and 80 scaled. The single largest task in the whole qualification is therefore the research-project essay, at 80 scaled marks or a fifth of the A-level - and it is one essay of about 300 words on a topic the student chooses and researches themselves. That is a remarkable return on preparation, and it is routinely under-prepared because it does not look like an exam topic.

3. 03Break Paper 3 into its three tasks

   Listening and responding is 35 raw, the translation into Polish is 10, and the multi-skill task is 30. Doubled: 70, 20 and 60 scaled. Add the two translations together and they come to 40 scaled marks, or ten per cent of the A-level, for two passages of a hundred words each. Add the two comprehension sections together, reading and listening, and they come to 140 scaled marks, or thirty-five per cent - the largest block in the qualification and the one most improved by routine practice.

4. 04Break Paper 2 into its two essays

   Two essays of about 300 words, each marked out of 40 by an AO3 grid worth 20 and an AO4 grid worth 20, for 80 raw and 80 scaled. So the two works together are worth exactly as much as the single research-project essay. If a course spends a term reading two works and a fortnight on the research topic, the time is not following the marks, and a student can correct that privately even where the class cannot.

5. 05Convert into a ten-hour week

   A defensible split, weighted towards scaled marks but adjusted for what actually improves with practice: three hours on reading and listening comprehension together, because that is the largest block and the most trainable; two hours on the research project, because it is the biggest single task; one and a half hours on the two translations, because a hundred words twice a week produces measurable improvement; two hours on the works; and one and a half hours on grammar drilling, which is not a paper at all but is thirty per cent of the qualification through AO3 and feeds every other line in the list.

6. 06Note what is not in the plan

   There is no oral preparation line, because there is no oral component. The pronunciation and reading-aloud work described in the next two sections belongs inside the comprehension and writing hours as a method, not beside them as a separate subject. That is the practical meaning of the structure: spoken Polish is an instrument in this qualification, and instruments are budgeted with the job they serve.

Result: Scaled marks: Paper 1 170, Paper 2 80, Paper 3 150, total 400. By task: research-project essay 80, reading 70, listening 70, multi-skill task 60, the two Paper 2 essays 80 together, the two translations 40 together. A ten-hour week that follows those proportions gives roughly three hours to comprehension, two to the research project, two to the works, one and a half to translation and one and a half to grammar - with no hours at all spent preparing for a speaking test that does not exist.

Here is a written sentence. Predict what a listener will hear, and give the reason for every difference. Wczoraj w Krakowie mój brat prosił kolegę, żeby przyszedł z chlebem, bo już jest za późno na zakupy.

1. 01Wczoraj - assimilation at the very first sound

   The w devoices to f before the voiceless cz, so the word opens with an f: fczoraj. The stress falls on the penultimate syllable, wczo, which means the word arrives front-loaded and its final syllable is light. A learner expecting a clear v at the start of the recording loses the first word, and losing the first word of a passage is expensive, because it usually carries the topic.

2. 02w Krakowie - a preposition is not a separate word

   The one-letter preposition w again devoices to f before the voiceless k, and it carries no stress of its own; it attaches to the following word, and the whole group is stressed on ko, the penultimate syllable of Krakowie. What the ear receives is a single phonetic word, fkrakowie. This is the general rule for one-syllable prepositions in Polish and it is one reason word boundaries are not audible: what is audible is the stressed syllable of each phonetic group.

3. 03mój brat prosił - three separate points

   Mój has ó, so it is heard as muj. Brat ends in an already voiceless t and is unchanged. Prosił contains the soft ś spelled si before a vowel, and its final ł is the English w sound, so the word arrives as prosiw. That last point deserves emphasis because the letter looks like an l and is not one: mały is heard as mawy and był as byw, and a listener still expecting an l loses the syllable.

4. 04kolegę, żeby przyszedł - denasalisation and a vanishing consonant

   The final ę in kolegę is routinely denasalised in ordinary speech, so it is heard as kolege. In przyszedł the rz follows a voiceless p and is therefore heard as sz, giving pszyszed; and the final ł after a consonant is dropped almost entirely in masculine past forms, exactly as in szedł, while the d devoices at the word edge - so what arrives is pszyszet. Two of the four processes inside one short word.

5. 05z chlebem, bo już jest za późno

   The preposition z before the voiceless ch devoices to s, giving s chlebem. Chlebem keeps its b voiced because the b is not at a word edge - contrast the bare noun chleb, heard as chlep. Już devoices its final ż to sz and is heard as jusz. Późno has ó, heard as u, and the soft ź of the źn cluster, so it arrives as puźno. Every one of these is predictable from the two edge processes rather than memorised word by word.

6. 06Put the whole thing together

   Fczoraj fkrakowie muj brat prosiw kolege, żeby pszyszet s chlebem, bo jusz jest za puźno na zakupy. Not one word has been changed; only the spelling has, and only in order to represent sound rather than morphology. Every difference belongs to one of five categories - assimilation, final devoicing, ó, the sibilant rows and the nasal vowels - and once a listener holds those five categories they are predicting rather than guessing.

Result: Approximate heard form: fczoraj fkrakowie muj brat prosiw kolege, żeby pszyszet s chlebem, bo jusz jest za puźno na zakupy. The differences are entirely systematic: w and z devoice before voiceless consonants and attach to the following word; final voiced consonants devoice; ó is the sound u; ł is the English w and disappears after a consonant in masculine past forms; rz after a voiceless consonant is heard as sz; and word-final ę is denasalised.

You have one fact: more and more young Poles who emigrated after 2004 are returning. Build a paragraph of argued Polish suitable for an essay, composing each sentence aloud before writing it, and show what the oral pass caught.

1. 01Say the bare fact and hear what is missing

   Spoken first attempt: Coraz więcej młodych Polaków wraca do kraju. That is a fact, not an argument, and saying it aloud makes the flatness audible in a way that reading it does not. An argued paragraph needs four moves after the fact: a cause, a consequence, a concession and a conclusion. Naming the four moves before composing is what stops a paragraph becoming a list, and it is the same four-move shape the AO4 grids reward in the essays.

2. 02Compose the cause aloud, then fix what the ear caught

   First spoken version: To wynika nie tylko sytuacja gospodarcza. The ear objects immediately, because wynikać requires z with the genitive. Corrected: Wynika to nie tylko z sytuacji gospodarczej, ale także z przywiązania do rodziny. Two things were repaired by saying it - the missing preposition with the case that follows it, and the correlative pair nie tylko ... ale także, which is a fixed structure and sounds incomplete when the second half is dropped. Neither error would have been obvious on the page.

3. 03Compose the consequence, using an impersonal form

   Spoken: W wielu mniejszych miastach otwiera się nowe firmy. Said aloud, the reflexive impersonal invites its more formal cousin, and the written register prefers it: W wielu mniejszych miastach otwiera się nowe firmy, a w ostatnich latach zbudowano tam nowe przedszkola i szkoły. The impersonal in -no is precisely what the AO3 grid means by range, and it arrived here because the sentence was spoken in a register that wanted it, not because a checklist demanded one.

4. 04Compose the concession, which is where the argument earns its marks

   Spoken: Ale nie wszyscy wracają na stałe. Then the objection a discussion partner would raise, folded in: Należy jednak zaznaczyć, że nie wszyscy wracają na stałe i że część z nich traktuje powrót jako próbę. The frame należy jednak zaznaczyć, że is worth memorising whole. Note część z nich with the genitive after the quantifier, and note that a concession stated and then answered is worth far more to an examiner than a concession avoided.

5. 05Compose the conclusion so that it concludes something

   Spoken: Podsumowując, powroty zmieniają polskie miasta. Too vague, and the vagueness is audible. Sharpened: Podsumowując, powroty nie odwracają skutków emigracji, ale zmieniają ich rozkład - najbardziej zyskują mniejsze miasta, a nie stolica. A conclusion that names a mechanism rather than restating the topic is the difference between the reasonable and the good bands of the AO4 grid, and hearing your own conclusion aloud is the quickest test of whether it says anything at all.

6. 06Write the paragraph, then run the pass the ear cannot do

   The oral pass catches government, agreement and register. It does not catch orthography, and for Polish that gap is real: ó, the nasal vowels, rz against ż, and h against ch are all invisible to the ear. So the written check is a separate pass with a separate purpose, run over the finished paragraph and looking only at spelling and punctuation. Two passes with two jobs, exactly as the listening method works, and for the same reason.

Result: Coraz więcej młodych Polaków wraca do kraju. Wynika to nie tylko z sytuacji gospodarczej, ale także z przywiązania do rodziny. W wielu mniejszych miastach otwiera się nowe firmy, a w ostatnich latach zbudowano tam nowe przedszkola i szkoły. Należy jednak zaznaczyć, że nie wszyscy wracają na stałe i że część z nich traktuje powrót jako próbę. Podsumowując, powroty nie odwracają skutków emigracji, ale zmieniają ich rozkład - najbardziej zyskują mniejsze miasta, a nie stolica.

The claim to argue is: Cyfryzacja państwa ułatwiła życie Polakom. Argue it for two minutes, argue against it for two minutes, then convert what you produced into one written paragraph of the kind the multi-skill task rewards.

1. 01Two minutes for the claim - collect reasons, do not judge them

   Spoken, in Polish, without stopping to correct: wiele spraw urzędowych można dziś załatwić przez internet; aplikacja mObywatel zastąpiła część dokumentów papierowych; e-recepta oszczędza wizytę u lekarza; płatności mobilne są powszechne; paczkomaty zmieniły sposób robienia zakupów. Five reasons in two minutes is a normal yield. Note that they are not all the same kind of reason - some concern the state and some commerce - and sorting them into those two groups is already the first analytical move.

2. 02Two minutes against the claim - and do it properly

   Spoken: nie wszyscy mają równy dostęp do internetu; osoby starsze często potrzebują pomocy; wykluczenie cyfrowe dotyczy zwłaszcza mniejszych miejscowości; zniknęły niektóre usługi oferowane osobiście; rośnie ryzyko oszustw internetowych. The discipline that makes this half useful is arguing it as if you believed it. A candidate who argues the opposite case half-heartedly produces a straw concession, and an examiner reads a straw concession as the absence of one.

3. 03Find the concession, which is where the two halves meet

   The strongest point on each side concerns the same people from opposite directions: digitalisation removes journeys for those who can use it and removes options for those who cannot. That is not a contradiction, it is a claim about distribution, and it is exactly the sort of point that lifts an answer out of the reasonable band. Named in one Polish sentence: cyfryzacja nie tyle ułatwiła życie wszystkim, ile przesunęła wysiłek z jednych grup na inne.

4. 04Choose the structure before writing

   For a 200-word multi-skill answer the efficient shape is four sentences: claim with the strongest supporting reason, evidence, concession answered, conclusion. For a 300-word essay it is the same shape with two supporting reasons and a second piece of evidence. Deciding the shape before writing is what stops an answer running out of room before the conclusion, which is the commonest structural failure in a timed 200-word response.

5. 05Write it, keeping the argumentative connectives visible

   Every connective in the drafted paragraph is doing structural work: moim zdaniem takes a position, świadczy o tym marks an inference from evidence, należy jednak zaznaczyć, że opens the concession, and podsumowując closes. Check the government as you write - świadczyć o with the locative, doświadczać with the genitive - because these frames are exactly where a candidate who has memorised the phrase but not the case gives themselves away.

6. 06Check the three required elements are all present

   Analysis: the distributional point about who gains and who loses. Personal reaction: moim zdaniem, with a position taken rather than a survey delivered. Conclusion: the final sentence, which states something the paragraph has actually established rather than restating the question. All three present, in about a hundred words of Polish, out of four minutes of talking. That is the return on discussion, and it is available to a student working entirely alone.

Result: Moim zdaniem cyfryzacja państwa rzeczywiście ułatwiła życie wielu Polakom: sprawy urzędowe można dziś załatwić przez internet, a aplikacja mObywatel i e-recepta oszczędzają czas, który wcześniej trzeba było poświęcić na dojazd. Świadczy o tym także powszechność płatności mobilnych. Należy jednak zaznaczyć, że korzyść ta nie rozkłada się równo: osoby starsze i mieszkańcy mniejszych miejscowości częściej doświadczają wykluczenia cyfrowego, a znikanie usług oferowanych osobiście odbiera im wybór. Podsumowując, cyfryzacja nie tyle ułatwiła życie wszystkim, ile przesunęła wysiłek z jednych grup na inne.

Here is a paragraph written the way it would be said. Correct it into prose suitable for a Paper 1 or Paper 3 answer, naming the type of every change. Moim zdaniem młodzi ludzie w Polsce coraz mniej interesuje się polityką, no bo w sumie nie widzą sensu. Ale jak by ktoś ich zapytał o klimat, to by odpowiedzieli. Wiem to bo mam kuzynkę która chodzi na marsze.

1. 01Agreement: a plural subject with a singular verb

   Młodzi ludzie is a masculine personal plural, so the verb must be interesują się and not interesuje się. This is the commonest error in fluent spoken Polish written down, because in speech the ending is unstressed and short and the two forms are nearly indistinguishable; on paper they are not. Note also that interesować się governs the instrumental, so polityką is correct here - worth confirming rather than assuming, since the same noun would be polityki after a quantifier and polityce after o.

2. 02Fillers: remove them and replace with a real connective

   No bo w sumie is three fillers in a row and none of them belongs in written Polish. What they were doing was signalling a reason, so the repair is to supply the connective that states one: ponieważ. The rewritten clause becomes ponieważ nie widzą w niej sensu, where w niej refers back to polityka in the locative after w, and sensu is in the genitive because the verb is negated. Two grammatical points recovered simply by removing three words.

3. 03Conditional: two spoken shapes that written Polish does not use

   Jak by is the spoken form of gdyby and is written as one word. To by odpowiedzieli is a spoken conditional with the particle detached; written Polish attaches it: odpowiedzieliby. The corrected sentence is Gdyby jednak ktoś zapytał ich o klimat, odpowiedzieliby bez wahania. Note zapytać kogoś o coś with the accusative twice, and note that jednak has been added to mark the contrast that the original signalled only by intonation.

4. 04Punctuation: the comma before a relative clause

   Która chodzi na marsze is a relative clause and Polish punctuation is grammatical, so the comma before która is compulsory rather than optional. The same rule governs że, ponieważ, gdy, jeśli and aby. Wiem to bo also needs its comma once bo is replaced. This is not a small point: an examiner reading a paragraph with no clause-boundary commas reads a writer who does not see the clause boundaries.

5. 05Register and precision in the last sentence

   Mam kuzynkę która chodzi is conversational in both structure and content. For an examined answer the source of the claim should be stated more economically and the evidence made a little more specific: Wiem to od kuzynki, która regularnie chodzi na marsze klimatyczne. Od kuzynki takes the genitive after od; regularnie converts an anecdote into a pattern; and marsze klimatyczne names the thing rather than gesturing at it. The claim is now evidence rather than a story.

6. 06Read the corrected version aloud as the final check

   The corrected paragraph should sound like written Polish read out, not like speech transcribed. If any clause still sounds like something you would say rather than something you would write, it needs one more pass. Then run the check the ear cannot do: ó, the nasal vowels, rz against ż, h against ch, and every comma before a subordinating conjunction. Two passes, two jobs, and between them they catch nearly everything a written answer can lose.

Result: Moim zdaniem młodzi ludzie w Polsce coraz mniej interesują się polityką, ponieważ nie widzą w niej sensu. Gdyby jednak ktoś zapytał ich o klimat, odpowiedzieliby bez wahania. Wiem to od kuzynki, która regularnie chodzi na marsze klimatyczne. The changes were: subject-verb agreement restored in the plural; three fillers replaced by one subordinating conjunction with the genitive of negation restored; two conditional forms written as single words; two compulsory clause-boundary commas added; and one anecdote converted into stated evidence.