I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to study Hebrew as a self-directed learner this semester. Autonomous language learning has been the perfect setting for me to delve into improvement of my Hebrew proficiency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Since I have a unique situation in which I have studied Hebrew in an immersed setting for a few years in elementary school, but haven’t had to apply it since, I am able to express myself verbally much better than I can actually read or write in the language. For this reason, I primarily intended to focus on retention of new vocabulary by reading research and news articles online, and then writing summaries on the topics I covered. What I found, and have been complemented on in the past couple months, is that my vocabulary and speaking have benefited from these efforts as well.
What worked? As I noted above, I think that reading articles online was most beneficial to my learning. Since I chose to read about topics that interested me, I was motivated to keep reading and spend a substantial amount of time trying to grapple with harder articles. Also, I chose to focus primarily on politics and international relations because of its relevance to my studies and other courses. This also helped by providing context and ensuring a level of understanding that could transfer to my use in conversation and writing. I found the cultural components of MLC really supportive of my learning as well. Sometimes when you grow up familiar with a culture, its traditions, stereotypes, hand gestures, and assumptions, you tend to overlook them and not pay attention to how they’ve developed or what their significance may be. The articles we read for MLC 105 and the culture presentations that were built into MLC 110 were great eye openers for me. I found it really interesting to think about the cultural assumptions built both into the Hebrew language as well as Israeli culture. Using Diigo and the Ning cultivated a sense of importance to the research I was doing. I enjoyed being able to share neat clips or articles I found with others, as well as look back at my personal journey throughout Hebrew learning this semester. It documented for me some of the cultural finds and learning I experienced. These included dissecting the Zohan clip for its stereotypes, understanding the subliminal messages embedded in political cartoons, or reading into the lyrics of Israeli songs. I found that the more interactive I was with the process of learning, the better I retained the new vocabulary and its contexts.
What didn’t work? Part of my learning plan included the completion of a novel in Hebrew. While I did so, I found that I was least excited about this assignment. I believe this is because I did not stop often to look up the words I was not familiar with, and I was reading at a much slower pace, while trying to understand the nuances of the story. I think the more interactive things I worked on were more effective. Since even when I was living in Israel, I preferred to read books in English, I am still really proud of completing the book. Another thing that could have improved my work would have been a possible connection with a native speaker with whom I could converse. I think that this would have supported my application of new vocabulary and been good motivation on a regular basis. Maybe in the future this would be possible through Skype conversations.
I think the biggest accomplishment for me was being able to understand Hebrew within the cultural context of its evolution. Understanding that Hebrew in its original form is such an ancient language, helped me gauge the tremendous transformation that occurred when it was in transition to being applied as a modern language. So many sects of society that we take for granted just did not exist in biblical times. Thus, it was helpful to understand that many new words were introduced to the language since the time of the European Enlightenment, as well as many adopted words that were blended into modern Hebrew, especially from Arabic, English, German, and Yiddish. Furthermore, I’ve found that there is a lot of specialized vocabulary depending on areas of expertise, vocation, or the military, which was supportive of my research. Other accomplishments include regular reading in Hebrew and practice in my writing, which I haven’t done since the sixth grade.
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