Jan Rusiecki (1926-2015)

Professor Jan Rusiecki (1926–2015) was a linguist, an erudite, and the doyen of English studies in Poland. He will be remembered as a man of inherent elegance and vast knowledge. Professor Rusiecki was an exceptional educator, scholar, and a recognized linguist of wide research interests. He specialised in the field of syntax and semantics of modern English, as well as in contrastive English-Polish studies. Some of his publications concerned the influence of the English language on contemporary Polish. A separate field of interest and research concerned applied linguistics, especially second language acquisition and foreign language teaching and learning. In recognition of his merits and achievements, the President of the Republic of Poland awarded him the Officer's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta in 2012.

Jan Rusiecki was born on April 4, 1926 in Warsaw, where he spent most of his life. He graduated from the renowned Stefan Batory secondary school, where he learnt three languages: Latin, German and English (of interest: his teacher was Antoni Prejbisz, the future author of English grammar books). In 1944, as an 18-year-old Home Army (AK) soldier, Jan Rusiecki took part in the Warsaw Uprising (conspiracy pseudonym: “Sęk”). Heavily wounded in August 1944, he managed to escape to the outskirts of Warsaw where he remained till the end of the war. After WWII, he became a student at the University of Warsaw to read both Slavic languages and literature as well as English. After graduating from the then Chair of English Studies he worked as a teacher in a secondary vocational school. Between 1954 and 1961 he taught English at the Warsaw University of Technology and, finally, in 1961, he obtained a position at the University of Warsaw, with which he was associated throughout his academic career.

A crucial turning point in Professor Rusiecki’s career was a British Council scholarship obtained in 1957, which allowed him to go to the Institute of Education, University of London, for almost two years. This is where he met his future wife, Hilda Andrews, but also where he made the acquaintance of a number of eminent scholars. In London Jan Rusiecki started cooperating with Sir Randolph Quirk, a famous linguist and grammarian. In 1959, Quirk founded the Survey of English Usage, one of the first and most famous corpora of English. Rusiecki obtained a post-doctoral Longman fellowship to work with Quirk’s team on samples of written and spoken British English to create the well-known corpus. In Randolph Quirk’s own words (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/about/quirk.htm): “Among the researchers thus funded, several were key to the day-to-day development of the project. (…) Jan Rusiecki (…) took prime responsibility for what we called the “Work-book”, specifying the criteria for every single linguistic and taxonomic decision as the corpus was analysed. David Crystal became the leading partner in devising the scheme by which the multiple systems of prosodic and paralinguistic features of speech were recognised, categorised, and transcribed by experts such as Janet Whitcut. Jan Svartvik and Henry Carvell led the way in computational analyses (…).” Clearly, Rusiecki’s stay in Britain resulted in establishing a network of long-lasting academic cooperation with leading British linguists of the time (see e.g., Quirk & Rusiecki, 1982), which was quite exceptional for a Polish scholar in communist times.

Back in Poland, Jan Rusiecki worked at the University of Warsaw and was affiliated with the Institute of English Studies for over five decades, from 1961 until 2012. He was also the Director of the Institute from 1978 to 1984. From the 1990s until 2009 he held the responsible post of Chair of the Scientific Council of the Institute of English Studies. In all his roles he proved to be tactful, wise, and extremely modest.

In the years 1969–1991 Professor Rusiecki was Head of the Department of Applied English Linguistics, responsible for the practical teaching of English to our students. Under his leadership, the Department became a significant research centre specialising in English language teaching methodology, language acquisition studies and language testing. His interests in language teaching started quite early. Already as a student, Jan Rusiecki published several books, mainly simplified versions of English language fiction with glossaries and commentaries. Then, he wrote many well-known and widely used textbooks and other materials for learning English. In 1963, together with his wife, Hilda Andrews, and Janina Smólska, he published a well-known textbook for English language teaching, Say it with us. Later, in 1977, again with Janina Smólska, English every day, used by generations of language learners. Professor Rusiecki used his own knowledge, acquired skills and experience to promote the teaching of English in Poland under the communistregime, and later, after the political and economic changes in 1989. In the 1990s, he was involved in the preparation of projects related to the development of the school foreign language teaching system in Poland. He was a co-founder of IATEFL Poland (International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language) in 1991 and its first President (https://iatefl.org.pl/whoiswho/). In the 1990s, he showed keen interest in developing Language Teacher Training Colleges and was the academic adviser to the Colleges in Białystok and Łomża. In 2003 he was elected the first President of PASE (Polish Association for the Study of English).

Professor Jan Rusiecki’s passion was mountaineering. He truly enjoyed hiking in the Pieniny, Beskidy and Bieszczady mountains; he also owned a house in Krościenko nad Dunajcem, built by his father before WWII. He also loved off-piste skiing and climbing in the Tatras. Let us hope that he is enjoying his eternal hike and that he will always be remembered by his students for his kindness, politeness, and impeccable manners of an English gentleman.

Professor Rusiecki’s Ph.D. students include: Małgorzata Pogorzelska-Bonikowska, Danuta Stasik, Agnieszka Otwinowska-Kasztelanic, Elżbieta Gajek, Zbigniew Możejko, Magdalena Kizeweter, Ewa Schramm, Agnieszka Szarkowska, Hanna Wiśniewska-Białas, Wojciech Kasprzak (co-supervised by Aniela Korzeniowska), Małgorzata Rzeźnik-Knotek, Beata Buksińska.

Agnieszka Otwinowska-Kasztelanic

References:

Andrews, Hilda, Jan Rusiecki, & Janina Smólska (1963). Say it with us! Kurs języka angielskiego dla zaawansowanych. Warsaw: Wiedza Powszechna.

IATEFL PL, accessed at iatefl.org.pl/whoiswho/ on 25 January 2023.

Quirk, Randolph & Jan Rusiecki (1982). Grammatical data by elicitation. In J. A. Anderson (ed.) Language Form and Linguistic Variation (pp. 379–394). John Benjamins Publishing.

Smólska, Janina & Jan Rusiecki (1977). English Every Day. Wydawnictwo: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne

Survey of English Usage, accessed at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/about/quirk.htm on 25 January 2023.

Zybert, Jerzy (2015). In Memoriam [Jan Rusiecki]. Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny LXII, 4/2015