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  • Modern Hebrew book reviews and resources done!

    Posted on by

    I’ve finished the Modern Hebrew book reviews/resources section! That means we currently have resource pages for the top 11 modern languages studied in the US (4 of the top 15 languages are American Sign Language, Ancient Greek, Ancient Hebrew and Latin). Eventually, I might include those, but not before I really have good recommendations for the main spoken languages!

    Hebrew proved a bit difficult; there really aren’t many good pronunciation resources for the language, and the textbook selection isn’t fantastic either. But I’ve found some good books hiding at Amazon, and if you happen to have some recommendations, let me know and I’ll add them!

    3 thoughts on “Modern Hebrew book reviews and resources done!

    1. josh

      The link, Modern Hebrew book reviews/resources section, on this page is broken for me. If it helps I’m on Firefox 10.0

      Reply
    2. Elana

      I’m not sure how helpful these resources will be for you because we used these resources at my school, so it’s more intended towards children with teachers, but I figured I’d tell you about them:
      In the younger grades, for vocabulary/reading comprehension, we used a textbook called “madregot” or מדרגות. I currently own the 5-6th grade version (though could probably dig up even earlier textbooks) and though the stories tend to be preachy and low in content, the book is written in 100% Hebrew with comprehension questions. Honestly, I remember despising madregot, but that may have more been due to my teacher rather than the text.
      For younger children (like, seriously young, so I don’t know how much this will affect your readers), my school switched to Tal-Am, which is a great program for children under…8 probably.
      Another source of reading material are the Gesher La-Noar books. They are (abridged) versions of actual Hebrew texts, written with occasional vowels (nekudot) and a glossary. We used them in middle school, and while the writing is not very challenging, they provide a good range (I recommend Nisim vNiflaot, then Shmona b’ikvot Echad, and especially for more advanced Sara, Giborat Nili).
      The grammar books we used in middle school are written in all Hebrew, but are very good books and (w/the help of google translate) cover good Hebrew topics and exercises. They are called Be-Derech Noam, with each level being titled after a letter of the alphabet (book 1 is aleph, book 2 is bet, and so on). To give you a sense of level, we used Gimel (3) in my class of about 12-15 for the non-native speakers (the top level was mixed native and not) who had been studying Hebrew for about 8 years or were very talented at languages, and we learned a lot of good grammar from that book.
      Finally, I know my Hebrew teachers used the website “seferisrael” for buying books, so I would check it out to see if anything else looks good, but that’s all I can recommend firsthand. Hope that helps!
      If you have any issues w/my transliteration, just tell me and I can find/provide the actual Hebrew titles as well!

      Reply

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