Lingva Polska — a new free Polish language platform for Ukrainians

The Office for Foreigners reports that there are now nearly one million permanent Ukrainian residents in Poland. The research carried out by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in 2022/2023 has shown that 22 percent of all Ukrainians know Polish, with 10 percent — fluently. According to the authors of the research, the main barriers to learning a foreign language are lack of time (38 percent) and lack of financial resources (33 percent). However, with no knowledge of Polish, Ukrainians are often unable to find a job that would match their skills. The Lingva Polska free language course is a response to the challenges faced by our Eastern neighbours.

The course is based on methods devised by Ukrainian polyglot and psycholinguist Witalij Zubkow, who knows more than 20 languages.

There is a misconception that to be fluent in a foreign language we need to know a lot of words and use them correctly. However, compared with our mother tongue, we will always know fewer words in a foreign language and in effect feel insecure or simply embarrassed to speak a foreign language. These are problems that our programme solves, with users gradually becoming confident that they understand and speak Polish. Learning a language stop being a difficult chore and becomes an interesting journey in which we compete with ourselves

- says Witalij Zubkow.

The project attracted the attention of the Deloitte Poland Foundation which has become its partner and offered its financial support. Lingva Polska offers free language classes on A1 and A2 levels.

We are very excited to have contributed to creating such an innovative and useful tool. We hope that Lingva Polska will help many Ukrainians break the language barrier and this way find jobs and boost their careers. Research carried out by Deloitte has revealed that 22 percent of Ukrainian refugees intend to stay in Poland, even after the war ends, and learning our language is one way to help them start a life and grow in a new country

- says Adam Mariuk, President of Deloitte Poland Foundation’s Board.

The course, created by the Association for Innovative and Digital Education, is now the most popular online language tool in Ukraine. Lingva Skills developed by the Association, is available in English and German languages, now also in Polish. The platform has been entered in the Ukraine’s Book of Records as the Ukraine’s largest online educational project.

Lingva Polska is the sum of our long-term experience in teaching foreign languages to people in Ukraine. Users will be offered varied 10 thousand exercises and learn the most popular phrases to use with confidence in every-day life. We have taken utmost care to develop this product. All elements of the system have been carefully designed and include our own visualisations that accompany the materials or dialogues read out by professional native speakers. The platform offers an A1 and A2 courses, free of charge. More advance levels are in the pipeline. Also we created video instruction how to use the platform

- says Mariya Boguslav, Executive Director at the Association for Innovative and Digital Education.

The platform is available at: lingvapl.org.