Modern Hebrew for Beginners offers high school, college, and independent-study students a state-of-the-art learning experience. This combination text- and workbook is designed to be used with web-based audio, visual, and interactive materials to give students multiple learning opportunities suited to a variety of learning styles. This allows intense practice of all four language skills: reading, writing, listening comprehension, and conversation.
Esther Raizen introduces the basic concepts of Hebrew through a wide variety of written and oral exercises in this text, many of which link to the website's computer tutorials and short original films based on contemporary Israeli life and society. She emphasizes the spoken language, while also paying attention to various aspects of normative grammar, of the written language, and of cultural elements associated with Hebrew. With this variety of materials and the capacity for continuous updating via the website, teachers and students will find this book endlessly adaptable and highly suitable for self-paced training.
A native of Israel, Esther Raizen is associate dean for research in the College of Liberal Arts and former chair of the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She specializes in Hebrew language pedagogy and has been an early adopter of computer technology for the Hebrew-language classroom and a pioneer in the production of open educational resources for Hebrew-language instruction.