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Teaching Modern Hebrew Project – 1
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7 thoughts on “Teaching Modern Hebrew Project – 1”
You should contact Carol Gaab. She gives demonstrations in Hebrew at conferences, and I’m certain she will have lots of ideas to help you out.
BTW and out of pure idle curiosity, are students learning Modern Israeli Hebrew or Classical Hebrew? It won’t change the method, as our Latin Kings have proved, I’m just curious.
I know Carol and have seen her present in Hebrew several times. I’m teaching modern Hebrew, since that’s what’s used for face to face communication.
Carol speaks enough for demos, and doesn’t read/write Hebrew, though her demos are so powerful because the Hebrew sound system, like Mandarin, is so foreign to WL students. I’m teaching it as a world language, though many of my students, since this is a temple based supplementary school, have heard/learned some Hebre prayers, blessings, songs, etc. before.
The extent to which I have to stay narrow n slow has been an eye opener, as well as being patient about decoding. I’ve been experimenting with Terry Waltz’ cold character reading, but it’s slow going. I only see these 3rd through 7th graders twice a week- Wednesday evenings for 35 minutes (after a full day of regular school- eek!) and Sunday morning for 20 minutes per group- which will increase when I turn the classes back over to the teachers and I coach/mentor instead of teach/model. Already there’s lots of enthusiasm and positivity- so let’s hope it continues throughout the coldest darkest winters days of my experiment. We all know it’s a game-changer- I’ll keep y’all posted. If you happen to check out my blog, pretty please write a comment on it! I will add the ‘subscribe ‘ widget soon for anyone who wants to follow. Cmovan.edublogs.org
1. Have you noticed a difference between those have a) not heard Hebrew, b) have heard Hebrew, and c) have learned prayers, blessings, and songs?
2. Keep us posted on Terry’s cold character reading (CCR). I am curious about this since, as I understand it, there is no phonological connection between the written characters and spoken form. In fact (I am told), that the four Chinese languages are not mutually comprehensible, but they use a common character set. Hebrew, on the other hand, is tied to a written alphabet in which there is a phonological letter-sound correlation.
3. A few years ago, a small group of 2-4 students met with me once per week. I was learning modern Greek on my own. We were to taking a foreign language (foreign culture, really) trip which included Greece. Students had motivation to learn Greek. So I worked through what I knew in an interactive way. I did not write the Greek letters on the board at first, they just made up their own spellings using English letters. Their pronunciation was quite good. I slowly introduced letters. They were at an advantage with the (Greek) alphabet as they knew many of them as symbols in math and science (they thus were accustomed to an American pronunciation of the the names of the Greek letters, and picked up the modern pronunciation as letters were added.)
Thanks for the further information. I wasn’t think of Carol in terms of the language per se but in terms of the pedagogy.
I have read advertisements for programs (both face to face and online) that will teach you “to read Hebrew in 90 minutes”. All that means is that you can decode the Hebrew script sufficiently to pronounce the texts without necessarily understanding what you are reading (other than already knowing what they mean). Once upon a time I taught beginning Hebrew at a seminary. It was very much grammar-translation method, but that was long before I knew about TPRS and TCI, and the goal of the course was to be able to read and parse the Tanakh, not have any sort of interpersonal communication at all.
You have some amazing stamina, Alisa!
Curious, what organization gave you the grant for this project? Maybe it’s a place for some of us to turn to for financing language programs outside of our schools?
Sean, the grantor is a Jewish educational organization. Robert, Carol was the first presenter to come to our (public school) district when we first started our journey twd CI. I have learned SO MUCH from her!
But I must say the decoding issues plus the lack of cognate verbs have been a real eye opener – and we are moving along sooo slowly. But the feedback so far has been positive – partly I think because the expectations were so low! I mean for years, decades, generations, kids would go to Hebrew school and survive their Hebrew class. Most Hebrew schools don’t even bother teacher Modern Hebrew – just biblical – and not for meaning – rather for decoding – liturgy, holiday and lifecycle events. I’m affiliated w/a temple movement that does value and teach modern Hebrew.
SO to come in to class at 5:30 on a Wednesday night and have a ball? No one expected that!
Alisa, this sounds like it is such a great opportunity for everyone involved. I hope you and your students become models for other schools.