In this work the author presents a proposal of an interpretation of two modern stories: The
Table by Paweł Huelle and The Wardrobe by Olga Tokarczuk. A comparison of two literary
images of ordinary things not only helps students to recognise various ways of presenting reality in
contemporary fiction but may also make them perceive the world more awarely and attentively.
Interpreting the symbolical meanings of pieces of furniture evokes reflection on the man and his
relations with himself and his surroundings. By revealing wealth existential and historical experience,
reading of the short stories stimulates the processes of developing students’ personalities
and broadens their reading skills.

Two poems by Joanna Papuzińska constitute a dyptich and a miniature reflective poetic collection at the same time. The composition of the cycle, aesthetics of its style and signs, organisation and philosophy of the depicted world were based on available children’s experience, the rule of cyclicity of nature, vegetative law of nature and the cycle of life and death, which determines human existence. The first poem, which is cheerful and optimistic, invites a child for a journey, awakes its curiosity about the world and arouses feelings which affirm nature and beauty of existence. The second poem contrasts determinism of transitoriness with the sphere of universal values, which constitute home and recreate joy and hope of the household, that is a basis of human and nature existence. Both of the poems are examples of a beautiful, emotional and intellectual axiological discourse which makes a child sensitive to the laws and values of existence. The poems also become a part of the tradition of literary and cultural references.

In this work the author tries to create a monograph of the archetypical symbol of rose. The author covers broadly conceived contexts and manifold cultural forms in whięh this symbol manifests itself. This research is also a methodological proposal of the usage of an association experiment and amplification, methods used in analitycal psychology, with reference to a literary masterpiece. The author’s main goal is an attempt to examine the symbol of rose in its archetypical, that is not strictly literary, aspect. Defined in such a way, the symbol becomes an interprative category in its intersemiotic rendering.

The article is a proposal of an intertextual reading of Zbigniew Herbert’s poem To the River. The interpretation comprises two aspects: cultural and geneological ones. A wide range of meanings of this text enabled checking senior students’ reading skills and their reading comprehension. The examined papers, written by students individually, were based only on Herbert’s poetry. The students interpreted the poem taking into consideration literary tradition of the genre, broad cultural context and the proper elements of the literary tradition. Besides a cultural thematic transposition, some of the interpretations showed stylistic reminiscence and a kind of thematic restitution concerned with the creation of a set of moral values in literature. The analysis of the interpretations led to the conclusion that with a broad scope of understandings of the poem students identified themselves with the eternal search for the inner truth, which is necessary for survival in the surrounding world.

Cieszyn Silesia - a region on Polish-Czech borderland has always been perceived and aesthetidsed by creators of its cultural image in a variety of ways. The universe of this region existence still interacts with the universe of art and still is a subject of the esthetic imagery. The 2001 publications take part in the balance of the polyphonic panorama of art in Cieszyn Silesia. The first of them - Znów minie wiek (An Age Will Pass Again) is an anthology of works by those authors who are significant in the literary history of Cieszyn Silesia (published by ‘Maderz Ziemi Cieszyńskiej’). The second one - Moja ziemia (My Land) - a set of excercises for regional education, deals with the themes of Cieszyn Silesia rich history, broadely concaved culture and folklore, contemporarity and its connections with Europe (published by a local publisher - ‘Publisher - Innowacje’). The purpose of this works is to pass on to the next generations the historical, etnographical and antropological knowledge about Cieszyn Silesia, and to create cultural identity of its residents.

Issues of broadely conceived regionalism arouse a strong interest and are dealt with by specially established academic societies and communities. In the literature directly dealing with the subject of regional education one can find surveys on methods used in regional teaching and subject matters of regional literature classes. However, for regionalism not to be a short-lived fashion, we need a deep reflection on the concepts connected with regional education, such as ‘region’, ‘regionalism’, and on the broad spectrum of issues connected with cultural heritage and regional identity.
What is also needed is a holistic approach to the matter of region in the process of education. All the mutually connected aspects-geographical, historical, economical, social and cultural-should also be taken into consideration. As far as the educational aspect of the problems of regionalism is concerned, we must remember that regional education should not occur occassionally but should be a well thought-out and full-scale process. This process ought to develop students’ sense of regional identity, broaden their knowledge of cultural heritage and inspire for activities for the benefit of the region. In the process of teaching we should also properly select issues connected with the region, motherland and Europe.

The author of the text recognises reading skills (scale of reading, level of the reading comprehension) as an important factor for students’ mental development and their self-study abilities. Reading skills can be developed by various systematic and well-organised excercises. The exercises must contain the return information encoded in a system of interactive ‘amplifiers’ of reading. These ‘amplifiers’ should appear as communicative, student-friendly praxiological indications which make easier deciphering of true meanings and grasping core meanings. The exercises perform various functions depending on the goal of reading and the level of the text complexity. But for students they are mainly a well-organised training of the active reading.

The purpose of this article is to present the outcome of the research on the textbooks for language, literary and cultural education published by ZNAK and WSiP for junior high school students.
The research concerns the measurement of comprehensibility (complexity) of the texts, according to Bengt Sigurd’s scale. This scale was also employed in earlier didactic research conducted by Krystyna Gąsiorek, Stanislaw Gajda and Anna Slodzińska. Thorough analysis of the texts, the measurement of the index of clarity for individual textbooks and comparison of the texts with Krystyna Gqsiorek’s earlier research all point to interesting conclusions. According to the method of measuring comprehensability established by Sigurd, the analysed texts fulfill the requirements of clarity. We can observe the textbooks’ authors regard for the adjustment of their textbooks to students’ perceptual skills.

In this article the author discusses the outcome of the research on high school students awareness and skills in concepts of truthfulness and similar ones. In the first part of the article the author, on the basis of publications by D.Rytel, S.Grabias, J.Bralczyk and others, presents the place of the concept of truthfulness in the language. She characterises epistemic modality and its linguistic exponents (linguisic determinants of the truthfulness of judgements). What proceeds from the theoretical part is a description of the gathered subject material on the student’s knowledge of concepts of truthfulness and their meanings and on the functions of the concepts of truthfullness in utterances (the way they modify content of speech).

The article is an attempt to answer two questions: does a second grade junior high school student perceive the distictiveness of ‘advice’ as a speech act, and how does he create this kind of persuasive utterance.
The poll which was conducted in Lublin schools shows most students’ inclination towards broadening the scope of meanings of a given name and towards merging the concepts of ‘advice’ and ‘persuasion’. Moreover, according to students one can persuade to certain behaviours by using such directive speech acts as: ‘threat’, ‘order’ or ‘prohibition’ and also by using non-persuasive spech acts like: ‘questions’, ‘statements’ and ‘narratives’. Lack of knowledge of the specificity of the genre (persuasive utterance) causes the appearance of the text substitution mechanism, which often results in unfortunate utterances. The reasons of students’ limited knowledge of ‘advice’ as a distinctive speech act and of the ways of expressing persuasive intentions is marginalisation of these issues in language acquisition and textbooks and curriculums of Polish language. Taking speech acts examples from parents, teachers and friends, and following the mass-media promoted fashion for aggressive behaviour lead to a tendency for using in social communication categorical speech acts of manipulation, which can influence the way persuasive speech acts are created.

The article present the outcome of the examinations of 3rd grade students’ idioms. Special attention was paid to the influence of the types of test questions on the answers given by students. It was revealed which of the idioms were commonly known and which ones were mastered less efficiently. What was also dicussed were the phraseological mistakes commited by the students.

In the article the author analysis selected directive acts - defective questions and imperatives, used by teachers in the classroom. The empirical material comprises the records of lessons conducted in primary and junior high schools in Bytom, Dąbrowa Górnicza, Katowice, Siemianowice Śląskie in the years 1998-2001. The directive acts are the most srongly emphasised and the most common type of utterance in didactic communication. Their illocutional strength makes the addressee behave in a way consistent with the content of the directive. The analysis of directive acts comprises their language structure, meaning and pragmatic conditioning.

Dydaktyka Literatury. T. 4. Red. W. Pasterniak. Zielona Góra 1981.

W kręgu zagadnień dydaktyki języka i literatury polskiej. Księga jubileuszowa dedykowana Profesorowi Edwardowi Polańskiemu. Red. Helena Synowiec. Katowice 2002

Pawłowska R.: Metodyka ćwiczeń w czytaniu. Gdańsk 2002.

Zofia Agnieszka Kłakówna: Przymus i wolność : projektowanie procesu kształcenia kulturowej kompetencji : język polski w klasach IV-VI szkoły podstawowej, w gimnazjum i liceum. - Kraków, 2003. [recenzja]

Danuta Opacka-Walasek: Czytając Herberta. - Katowice 2001 [recenzja]