The article discusses the issues concerning native language acquisition and its influence on learning foreign languages. The article author presents theories defining the strategies of native language acquisition as well as their biological, social and communicative bases. He also discusses the difference between first and second language acquisition. Being aware of such a difference enables a teacher to design an efficient study programme.

The article aims at discussing the strategies of maintaining Polish traditions in different types of families leaving abroad: migration families, disconnected single-parent families, broken families, mixed families leaving in a country of one of the parents’ origin or a country foreign to both parents, as well as multinational patchwork families. In each type there are certain difficulties in transmitting the Polish language and culture, but they are caused by different reasons. The social status also determines the used code (a limited or developed one). It results in great language diversity among children living abroad and determines their attitudes towards Polishness.

The article aims at discussing the situation of a bilingual foreign child at a Polish school and the type of the educational, psychological and pedagogical support that it might receive. The article author proves such child to be a student with special educational needs due to its specific linguistic, social and psychological situation. Both theory and practice suggest that such child’s educational success results above all from its mental vocabulary content. In the case of a bilingual student such vocabulary needs to be competently developed and stimulated.

The article author presents the method of evaluating monolingual and bilingual children’s narrative competence in Polish without the use of pictures. A test created for the purpose of the research evaluates a child’s ability to recreate a story previously heard without using any visual materials. The author presents the advantages of such test and its usefulness in different disciplines, including pedagogy, psychology and speech therapy. In bilingual children’s education it can help one assess the level of Polish language knowledge.

The article author presents her own project of teaching Polish as an inherited or second language to children aged 5 to 9. It is based on the constructivist theory of teaching, Ingarden’s theory of literary work cognition and Polish literary texts. The essential part of this project is education through various games that systematize the material presented during each lesson. The author highlights the importance of enactive text cognition, passing from an object recognized through various senses to its symbolic representation, from literality to metaphor. The literary text becomes yet another source of language experience for children.

The article author presents the methods of developing text-creating competence of students in a Polish diaspora. The article begins with a short presentation of discourse specificity in Polish diaspora teaching. The author also defines such notions as text competence and text-creating competence and explains their specific position in teaching bilingual students for whom Polish is an inherited language. The author refers to Cumming’s theory of two levels of language competence. Next, she discusses creativity and games as important elements supporting education and developing text-creating skills. The article concludes with several examples of exercises for students.

Literary texts presented to children during Polish as a foreign language classes must be suitable for the purposes of the lesson as well as the learners’ language competence, interests and intellectual and cognitive abilities. Brzechwa’s poems about animals are of great educational and didactic value. The animals represent different features reflected in certain idiomatic expressions that create the linguistic image of the world. Brzechwa’s poems can be used for various linguistic exercises; they can also inspire children to create their own texts.

The number of migrant children at Polish schools is increasing. They should use the Polish language not only to communicate at school and beyond, but also to understand the world. In order to achieve this goal certain actions must be taken because the development of the necessary communicative and cognitive skills does not occur spontaneously. The article presents the specificity of the term language of education, distinguishing it from language of everyday communication, and proves its importance for children’s educational achievements. The article author also proves the necessity of distinguishing between shaping the linguistic communicative skills and cognitive language proficiency.

The article is based on the research conducted at Silesian schools concerning the position and functioning of foreign students as well as the ones coming back from emigration in the Polish educational system. The article author analyses the adaptation mechanisms of the students and parents with migrant experiences as well as the needs of the receiving communities. The analysis is based on the material gathered through the conducted survey.

The article refers to the turn of the 1940s and 1950s of the 20th century, when the Greek refugees, the victims of the civil war, arrived in Poland. There were approximately 14 thousands of them. The article author refers to the concept of literature that delights with the good and the school that shapes minds and civic attitudes, which is essential in the contemporary world, marked with migration crises.

The article aims at presenting children’s and youth books published in 2013, 2014 and 2015 by the publishing house called ‘Poławiacze Pereł’. The author analyses the content of three short stories: The Zebra by Ifi Ude, Bahar Means Spring by Ag- nieszka Aysen Kaim and Tales Under the Olive Tree by Aida Amer. The article author presents her considerations on multiculturalism as a subject of Polish education. The students’ comprehension of ‘otherness’ may enable them to respect and accept the dif- ferences in race, appearance, religion, behaviour, culture, clothing and preferences.