The article presents the evolution of views on educational functions in teaching literature. It exposes, above all, those trends in discussions most closely connected with the introduction of the new socio-political system in Poland in the years 1945–48, which later, during the long period of over forty years, determined the ways of designing educational tasks and the functioning of literature at school. From this perspective, the most essential became the problem of gradual elimination of an individual’s subjectivity as well as of any literary work. This was best exemplified in the discussions of that time which focused on: 1) the form and essence of the so-called “new humanism”; 2) evaluation of the “usefulness” of pedagogical theory in creating this “new society” of the time; and 3) possible uses of literature as a tool for education.

The article concentrates conclusions of pool, which teachers of Polish secondary schools in Toruń have filled. This pool related to didactic problem of recepction of contemporary literature.The autor writes about relation of teachers of the Polish language to „contemporaneousness”, about place of contemporary literature in school curriculum, about selection of reading matters and about suitable methods in teaching contemporary literature. It appears that teachers of Polish generally do not appreciate „contemporaneousness” in pupil’s literary education. But they have steady opinion on the subject of presence this literature in school curriculum. They think that reading list of contemporary literature is too long and not very attractive. It can cause the congestion and weariness in literary study among young people. First of all they don’t approve too extensive list of so-called literature of fact and literature of fact and literature of occupation and war. In their opinion, on the reading list the most significant compositions from the latest literature writings should be set. And one more thing: teachers of Polish aren’t sure of efficency of speciffied methods in teaching contemporary literature. However the advice to use the investigative method, the problem — controversial method and a method of drama. They appreciate reflectiveness too.

The author of the paper considers the problem of teacher’s training in relation to the results of scientific research on the subject published in West European countries and also in Poland. She points at lack of commonly used didactical models and makes further assumption that the syllabus and programs for student’s education should aim at activating more of their reflexive attitude over practical teaching by the structures offered to them in order to help design their own personal theories. And so she designs a general outline for such organisation of clesses in methods of teaching. Her own views are supported by the analysis of the series of new school handbooks entitled I like it! (To lubię!). The arguments for her views she found in activities undertaken after 1990 resulting from the introduction of reform of education. The author’s suggestions formulated in this article were described in the form of workshop exercises in classes designed for students. These classes may enable them to reconstruct knowledge of teaching already acquired through their earlier educational experience.

The article presents various ways of making use of onomastics as a method in teaching literature in both primary and secondary school exemplified with the selected short-stories by H. Sienkiewicz, B. Prus and M. Konopnicka. A role of surname signification was shown by their use, referring to the author’s opinion and dictionary explanations. However, following K. Gorski’s view who found four basic functions in onomastics such as: realistic, symbolic, stylistic and intellectual ones, it was shown how the above-mentioned positivistic writers used them practically. The aim of the paper was to make us aware of possible interpretations based on onomastics which, in turn, can be used in the pupil’s literary analysis and in a natural way link their knowledge and learning of literature with learning about language as such.

In this article were discussed some selected words taken from the best known epic poem in Polish — the ones of which meanings still belonging to heritage of the earlier epochs due to lexical-semantic changes, characteristic of the second half of 20th century, lost their current actuality and just stopped being used as if forgotten altogether. Vanishing of their old fashioned meanings triggered some interlanguage processes since after disappearing from everyday use their contents must have been eliminated too. The processes of this kind presented in this paper refer to special meaning of a given lexical item, limiting its linking skills to few contexts as well as meaning repartition of word-forming double items. The semantic archaisms collected by the author form a kind of dictionary which can be used by a teacher to help his pupils comprehend 19th century text to the full.

The author of this paper makes an assumption that getting to know some features of the langue of values of the secondary school graduates is significant from the teaching point of view because according to the indication of humanistic linguistics, it enriches our knowledge about a student as a human being, offering him help recognize and make a hierarchy of values as well as take decisions in varied life situations, finally leading to his greater language awareness. Wide scale experimental research help the author establish the hierarchy of values accepted by the youth and determine ways of conceptualisation of a given value. The author suggests considering the problem of decision making in the cognitive way because in student’s definitions most common and multicategory interpretation of the words expressing values can be found. He also shows the need to make use of the detailed linguistic analysis of the spoken language of his students based on the similar analysis introduced by J. L. Austin and J. H. Searle allowing to reveal the actual state of linguistic and communicative competence of the young people. The above mentioned research issues result in some didactical consequences which are revealed in need of appropriate (based on factual reality) planning and successful realization of school and outside school educational (in sense of learning) and instructive teaching (in sense of up-bringing) influences. Not only making use of the obtained didactical diagnosis to educate young people linguistically but also their literary-cultural education are shown clearly in this paper.

The article was prepared on the basis of the written assignments of the primary school graduates and also pupils of the secondary level grammar and vocational schools. The analysis of the collected material made it possible to answer the question how young boys in adolescence time categorize the meaning of the word HOME (DOM), how they evaluate it and value. From the analysis of their responses it can be found that the boys perceive many functions of the family home of which the most important among them are: 1) procreative function the aim of which is keeping biological continuation in a family through having children; it is closely connected with further child care and also meeting the child’s material needs; 2) social function which leads to transfer of the correct patterns of behaviour towards others and also in relation to cultural tradition thus referring to the problem of education in a family in general; 3) recreative function connected with ways of organizing leisure time and interpersonal contacts; and finally 4) religious one taking into consideration family member’s attitude towards faith and religious activity. Therefore HOME, as seen by adolescent boys, is considered not only as having its material value where the family live together but most of all being of social and cultural value.

Telling stories at school becomes the main narrative form which the pupils learn early and which is most enjoyed by them. At the same time, it is a foundation for building other narrative forms such as reports and compositions. Therefore, errors committed in teaching storytelling may cause inability to acquire necessary skills of narration by learners.
It is necessary to make a didactical diagnosis to find out if the pupils in forms IV–VIII learned the basics of storytelling and if they can include their language knowledge in constructing the text of their own.
A ready-made pattern of a story told at school was used as the didactical tool to be compared later with the empirical data found in the actual written assignments of pupils. The analysis contained 103 pupil’s works — the stories containing reports in the middle part were discarded, preference was given to those stories of cause-and-effect type. For statistical analysis, a randomised sample was taken which referred to a large number of 2000 words altogether found in the selected parts of the stories for every class.
The texts of the stories were analysed according to the following issues:
— the title of a story,
— the analysis of the beginning and the ending formula of a story,
— the development of the subject of a story,
— the vocabulary used by the pupil,
— the syntax applied in a story.
On the basis of such a didactical diagnosis, it was possible to point to some problems in storytelling skills of the pupils and also evaluate them, paying special attention to lack of creativity and/or individual character of the stories told by them.

In education of Polish language teachers in the initial stage, the causative factor of an educational dialogue can be teacher’s questions followed by his pupil’s answers. The questions asked by the teacher differ both in structure and a degree of difficulty, so they usually activate various degrees of thinking complexity of the pupils. The second important factor of such an educational dialogue is the atmosphere of interactions among the teacher and his pupils, called a psychological situation of the dialogue. The psychological situation of school dialogue and the degree of intensivity of interactions among the teacher and his pupils can be determined by four models of interactive type of behaviour. They differ from one another in the range of information obtained “in return” expressed by either questions or answers. The most favoured is the model of cooperative type of communication, characteristic of the commonly shared (by the teacher and his pupils) area of attention and the questions asked by the pupils truly interested in the created didactical situation. Polish language as the subject of school syllabus has the greatest potential for teaching school children cooperative communication skills.

Metatext factors in educational discussion can be divided into several types. According to text criterion, there are two main types of units to be found which take part in text organisation and in a discourse. All the elements of a discourse which help organize and make order in pupils' answers belong to the first type, and they are like: “say it again, please,” “make it a whole sentence, will you?,” “correct it” (what you have just said or written), “say it in different words” or “correct it nicely, will you?,” “but you can’t write,” and the like — so they deal mainly with a linguistic side of the process of knowledge transfer. The second type of metadiscourse expressions are: short word-like utterances, conjunction words, additional expressions, and metatext operators, etc., that is the words whose function is to make the text coherent. They are: 1) expressions which affirm the text — metadiscoursive such as: fine, well, good, poorly, very well, nicely (you speak and or your handwriting is you read), and the like; 2) expressions which help organize the text: so, but, because, well, at last, because of, surely, only, probably, and the like, which mainly introduce the text itself, fill in the gaps or refer to something that has already been said/written or read. Such a very typical word functioning to enhance coherence of the didactical discourse is the word “no, ...” in Polish, which can be more or less adequately expressed by the English “well, ...”. It occurs in these parts of the lesson where teacher-pupil communication speeds up, exchange of information becomes vivid, or when the teacher aims at language activisation of his pupils. Also expressive “No, ...” can appear in teacher’s language — the so-called speed-up “no” in the context of the type: well, do it!; well, say it!; well, write it now; well, read it then!; well, think about it; well, be quick, will you? However, high frequency of such “No”-es in teacher’s speech does not really favour the didactical process as a whole nor make the pupil more active both in thinking and verbally.

The article deals with the chosen syntactic problems in school teaching. Its initial part offers the suggestion of conceptual network as far as syntax is concerned, specially designed for the classes from IV–VIII of primary school, which, in the author’s opinion, is more clear and useful for a teacher than the traditional teaching syllabus. In the second part of the article, the problems connected with differentiation and classification of verb forms were discussed (here the subject of verb forms with “self” was mentioned), as well as problems of the so-called syntactical relationships were presented (the main relationship versus side ones, types of noun relationships with adverbial expressions, ways of telling an object from a time clause). In the analysis of the problems mentioned above, the concept of semantical syntax (predicative-argumentative) as well as generally understood transformational grammar were presented.

The subject under consideration here is the problem of correct pronunciation and, to be more precise, orthophonic exercises. In this paper, ways of improving speech defects are presented, indicating the role of training exercises and correcting the speech apparatus. The authoress offers a big range of this type of exercises for correcting the vocal sphere of speech in pronouncing syllables, words, and sentences. In orthophonic education, great conceptual and practical values are given to articulatory and diction exercises, which are thought to be the culture foundation in living speech and without which true communicative expression would be impossible to achieve. She believes that the exercises in practising pronunciation of oral and nasal vowels are especially useful in work on speech apparatus (diction) as well as on vowel groups and consonant ones in correct accentuation of words and in expressive reading of the whole sentences. The above-mentioned set of coefficients in loud reading technique is, according to the paper’s author, the core of all attempts applied to improve speaker’s diction.

Podracki J., Składnia polska. Książka dla nauczycieli, studentów i uczniów, Warszawa 1997.

Kurczab H. (red.), Dydaktyka 3, Rzeszów 1996.

Faber A., Mazlish E., Jak mówić, żeby dzieci się uczyły w domu i szkole, Poznań 1996.

Cząstka-Szymon B., Synowiec H., Polszczyzna w szkole śląskiej. Cz. I: Ćwiczenia dla uczniów. Cz. II: Przewodnik dla nauczycieli, Katowice 1996.

Zarębina M., Imiona bohaterów „Pana Tadeusza”. Nazwy osób w epopei, Kraków 1996.