Learning Hebrew Today

By Author: Gordon M
Total Articles: 9
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To learn to speak Hebrew today is certainly a-lot easier than learning Hebrew in the past, maybe I would be better saying the resources available to us to learn Hebrew in the modern world make learning the language easier. How we learn Hebrew today is very different to the traditional methods that were used in the by-gone days, there are still of course some die-hard practitioners of the traditional methodology but you will find these practitioners to be as old as the methods that they are employing.

The long held assumption about learning a second language is that grammar is more important than vocabulary. Second language instruction has traditionally focused on teaching adult language learners grammatical knowledge: sentence construction, verb conjugations, singular and plural forms, noun-adjective agreements, verb tenses, etc. Linguistic research, however, has demonstrated that vocabulary is more fundamental than grammar . Most linguists agree that the best way to learn a second language is by first building a declarative foundation so you have a ready supply of words ...
... and phrases which are locked into the declarative memory. Procedural language skills are more easily built upon this foundation.

Today most of us are used to the internet, computers, mobile devices and tablets so it would make sense that any modern approach to learning a language would incorporate these technologies into their learning programs and this is certainly true to form. I have touched on this in previous posts; top language programs will utilize the latest linguistic studies to help them design courses and programs that allow you to learn to speak Hebrew in not only a natural but also intuitive way. Any course worth its salt, be it an online course or software home study program will utilize a number of resources that will not only help you learn the language but more importantly, retain the language. While you may be thinking to yourself that all the language courses today use software interfaces and online resources and you would be correct in thinking this, but its the manner in which they employ these resources that make the top courses and programs stand out from the rest.
There is no point having lots of tools and resources if the course lay out is not navigable, natural and intuitive.