Teaching languages is always a challenge, as one needs to relate in multiple ways to the material taught. Some may learn faster than the others based on the immediate interest in the topic, as well as the emergency to succeed mastering a language for different aims - immigration, job, relationships etc.
For non-European languages, written in a different alphabet, like Hebrew, for instance, the challenge is even bigger because learning in this case means a full re-wire of the brain, that is supposed not only to reconnect to a different way of saying and grammar rules, but also to alphabets read from the right to left.
As both a teacher and learner of Hebrew, I coped sometimes with the right materials, allowing me not only to expand my vocabulary, but to remember it easily. Ma se be´ivrit - how do you say it in Hebrew - by Smadar Raveh-Klemke was my revelation of the last months. Each page has a graphic representation of a topic - kitchen, bathroom, at the beach, two people seated in the front of the TV etc. - with words written in Hebrew, with transliteration. Thus, you can learn the vocabulary of the topic but also engage in short conversation about it, for instance ´what do you see?´ ´what people are doing?´ etc. Although the discussion may be A1-A2 level, the vocabulary is rich and helps to express properly different situations, objects and contexts.
The book is mostly aimed at German speakers - with a rich vocabulary explained alphabetically at the end - but for the visual part at least, it can be used by any kind of learners. As for now, the book is available only in print format, therefore it is hard to use it for online classes.
Rating: 5 stars
