Supplementing conversational Hebrew outside of school

amother

White

Fri, Nov 09 2018, 11:37 am

Tell me about your experiences supplementing the skill of speaking modern Hebrew outside school when your child's school primarily teaches textual Hebrew (I.e. reading and translating Chumash) and grammar. Did you use a tutor? One-on-one or in a group? Send to a class? Practice at home?

My DH and I don't speak Hebrew, but we can read phonetically and know a handful of words and are familiar with the prefixes and suffixes. We could memorize some additional vocabulary ourselves if that was necessary to practice with our kids, but we are nowhere near fluent. So "just have one parent speak to them in Hebrew" isn't realistic for us.

Edit: If it matters to your answer, our oldest child is in kindergarten. Reads English well enough to get through children's books. Can phonetically read and write in Hebrew, but more slowly than English and has very little Hebrew vocabulary.

amother

Blonde

Fri, Nov 09 2018, 3:39 pm

We have one Hebrew-speaking parent in our family, but still wanted supplementation. We hired an Israeli teacher to interact with our children in Hebrew on a regular basis - not regular lessons so much as baking in Hebrew, doing a craft in Hebrew, and so on. She used the immersion approach, and explained what words meant through gesture, example or demonstration, only using English in an emergency. She also labeled everything in our house in Hebrew the way parents often do for emerging readers on their own language.

We also obtained as many Hebrew books and videos as we could, including some that were intended for language-learners and others with subtitles (helpful for the parents). We're ok with non-religious and non-Jewish entertainment (within reasonable and age-appropriate limits), so we had more to choose from than someone stricter. The non-Hebrew-speaking parent in our family whose language skills are similar to yours learned to read children's books quite expressively!

Start young. Language acquisition occurs naturally during the early years, and isn't the burden it becomes for older students and adults. Five is not too late for your oldest, but your younger child(ren) can benefit as well.

amother

White

Sun, Nov 11 2018, 8:22 pm

amother wrote:

Thanks! This is really helpful. How often and for how long did the teacher come over? Also, feel free to recommend any books and videos that you especially liked.