The Polish alphabet, while fully phonetic, can be difficult for foreigners to master. One of the most difficult distinctions for English-speakers is between hard and soft versions of consonants. Working with a partner or tutor, practice saying the words "proszę" (please) and prosię (piglet); the difference between sz and si is very difficult, but obviously important to master in this case. You can also use tongue-twisters to improve your pronunciation: try to memorize the most famous Polish tongue-twister, which is the first line of a poem by Jan Brzechwa: "W Szczebrzeszynie chrz...szcz brzmi w trzcinie, i z tego Szczebrzeszyn słynie." Other Polish tongue-twisters can be found in Resources below.
There are essentially two Polish verbs for every one verb in English: imperfective and perfective. Conjugate both forms of a verb and then translate for yourself to pick up on the distinctions in meaning. For instance, use the verb czytać: czytam/czytasz/czyta/czytamy/czytacie/czytaj... (I/you/he-she-it/we/you pl/they read). If you add the same endings to the perferctive verb, przeczytać, you get the future tense: przeczytam/przeczytasz/przeczyta/przeczytamy/przeczytacie/przeczytaj... (I/you/he-she-it/we/they will read). In the past tense, the imperfective verb indicates that you were doing something (czytałem, "I was reading"), while the perfective verb indicates that you completed in the action (przeczytałem, "I read.")
Practice placing nouns in the seven cases of Polish: nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, locative and vocative. Use one regular noun from each gender: let's try dom (masculine--house), lampa (feminine--lamp) and okno (neuter--window). Dom: dom, domu, domowi, dom, domem, domu, domu. Lampa: lampa, lampy, lampie, lampę, lamp..., lampie, lampo. Okno: okno, okna, oknu, okno, oknem, oknie, okno. You can also form plurals: domy, lampy, okna. Domy: domy, domów, domom, domy, domami, domach, domy. Lampy: lampy, lamp, lampom, lampy, lampami, lampach, lampy. Okna: okna, okien, oknom, okna, oknami, oknach, okna.
To improve your listening comprehension, work with a partner or tutor to create a fill-in-the-blank exercise. Using an unfamiliar song or short piece of video, create a transcript and randomly remove words: these should be words that are easy for you to recognize. Listen through to the audiovisual clip two or three times and try to fill in the blanks and then compare your answers against the key.
Combine your knowledge into increasingly complicated phrases. Use verbs, nouns, adjectives and prepositions to create contextual sentences that show nouns in their different cases and verbs in their tenses. Examples: Marek spaceruje/spacerował (Marek is going for a walk/was going for a walk); Ja widzę Marka (I see Marek); Ona napisała list do Marka (She wrote a letter to Marek); My oddaliśmy ksi...żkę Markowi (We returned the book to Marek); Ja myślałam o Marku (I [feminine] was thinking about Marek); Czy wy chodziliście do szkoły z Markiem (Did you [plural] go to school with Marek?); Dobranoc, Marku! (Goodnight, Marek!)