[pessimizer]

Yeah, I'm not buying it being useful at all for learning a language as such. For getting used to target language sounds and relating those sounds to a text, it seems good, though.

The key to learning is comprehensible input. You want to understand 98% of what you're reading. You can get that through repeatedly reading the same things, through graded readers, and through the use of bilingual dictionaries. Once you get to the point when you can make a switch to interesting arbitrary target language reading using only a target language dictionary, it becomes a virtuous circle and simply a matter of time.

If the orthography of a language is weird, I could see this being useful to get to the next step, but as far as I know Polish orthography is straightforward (unlike English, French, or Chinese for example.)

edit: on second thought, it might help with acquiring the prosody of Polish even if you're just listening (and hopefully reading along out loud) to the sounds like a dog would. Prosody is half the battle.

edit2: also translations are a pretty bad idea. You're trying to pick up the prosody of Polish, but you're reading people trying to imitate English in Polish. Unless it's a very free translation to the point that it distorts the original work. Just find out what Polish people are doing; their cultural references are part of the language anyway.

[tayo42]

That's basically what they did with this blitz thing

> To translate, you'll rely on your existing knowledge, quick look-ups, context clues, and the audiobook's narration (inflection, pacing, etc.).