Sentence: Before I join the competition I must first polish/polish up my skills.

The dictionary says polishing skills or techniques means working on improving them. I want to know if this usage of the "word" polish is still common and acceptable in English speaking countries nowadays? Do polish and polish up mean the same thing in this sense? Which one is more widely used?

Hope native speakers can help me with this, thanks.

This is part of my paper, so i need native speakers to help me. thank you.
As for the details of the data collection, during the research, we look up all the words and meanings in the Dictionary of Contemporary Chinese (5th edition) from the first item in the first page to the end to find out the new words and new meanings of some words that are added to the new edition of the Dictionary. All the words are collected together, and then these words are to be divided into several sorts of groups according to the disciplines and rules listed in previous, for the convenience of further studying. To what extent the new cyberlanguages are added, and what kind of cyberlanguages is added to it is both studied with great carefulness in the research.

i've been doing polish for a month and ive finally got to the point where i can form a sentence like: Czemu ktoś myślałby, żeby polski był trudny? Bez wątpienia, ludzie tylko przesadzają, kiedy mowią że będzie wam trudno uczyć się polskiego..(i'll be glad if someone could correct me on this) i can form such sentences within 10 seconds (including with those with any declination), with fragmented utterances in between (but only mentally; speaking it to an actual Pole would be harder, I imagine). I've been learning polish for a month, and i learn pretty fast...however i have no idea what the next step is. I have finished 2 polish teach-your-self books from the library (they complemented each other very well coz' some of the grammatical info missing from one book would be there in the other). At the moment, my vocabulary is still kinda limited (I know przesadzac, and presadzic but don't know the polish for 'to punch' or 'dishes') but I have a dictionary but I'm not sure where to start improving on.... What do I do next (without spending money)?

Links with helpful tips on pronunciation will be very helpful :)

I would love to learn Polish 'properly', however there are no classes where I live :( Is learning Polish difficult? Well, actually there is a teacher who is Polish in my school so I would be able to ask him things. Would reading a dictionary help?

Thanks in advance!

Anyone speak Polish? Help needed with a word?

I'm learning a poem by Maria Pawlikowska Jasnorzewska, and there's a word in it that's not in the dictionary: obalone.

As in: Dzis obalone cudem, jako kula kregiel, spoczelo w snie niepamieci --

Does 'obalone' mean overthrown? And what does the sentence mean?

Thanks a lot!