Why we changed our Hebrew syllabus

When Ulpan Bayit first opened, we taught with the books and methods we knew from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

That was my professional background. I had trained there, and the first teachers who joined me were people I had studied or worked with. We knew those materials well. They were excellent, and it made sense to build on them.

But over time, we realised we were missing something about the people sitting in our classrooms.

Most of them weren't preparing to study at an Israeli university. They wanted to build a life in Tel Aviv. They needed Hebrew to find work, speak to colleagues, communicate with clients, or manage a team.

Our materials developed reading and writing skills that made a lot of sense in an academic setting. Meanwhile, there were small, practical situations our students needed more opportunities to practise.

Sometimes it felt like bringing a tank to deal with a mosquito. We were teaching people a great deal, while missing things that could make an immediate difference to their day.

We kept adding pages

At first, we carried on using the university textbooks and added our own exercises, worksheets and activities alongside them.

Whenever we noticed something our students needed, we made more material. Over time, the extra pages became a substantial part of what we were teaching.

Eventually, we had to admit that we were spending a lot of our time finding ways around the books we were supposed to be using.

That was when we began the long process of replacing them with coursebooks of our own.

We already had experienced teachers, a clear understanding of how to teach Hebrew, and a growing collection of materials we had tried in class. Turning all that into a complete syllabus was still a much bigger job than simply collecting the worksheets into a folder.

We needed to work through the progression: what students would learn, when they would meet it, and what we would ask them to do with it.

The change also affected how we prepared our teachers. I've written about how that eventually led us to start our own Hebrew teacher-training program.

WhatsApp messages count as progress

At Aleph level, we began thinking much more about the exchanges a beginner might actually need during the week.

A short WhatsApp conversation about something ordinary. Understanding a recorded message. Being able to follow and take part in a small piece of daily life.

These things aren't necessarily easy. A voice message can be a serious listening task for a beginner. But the reason to work on it is immediately clear: this is something you might need outside the classroom.

That changes the kinds of texts, recordings and exercises you choose for a lesson. You still need a careful progression. You also need to keep asking what that progression lets the student do.

The future tense needs something to talk about

At Bet level, students spend time working with the future tense and more complex prepositions.

In the academic materials we had used, a conversation might centre on which university program someone intended to study. Our students had plenty of other plans they wanted to discuss.

Going out with friends. Arranging to meet. Asking someone to do something. Talking about hopes and things they wanted to happen.

Those situations give people a reason to use the forms they are learning. The future tense becomes useful because you are trying to make a plan with another person.

This is also why we teach Hebrew grammar. We want students to have tools they can use across different conversations, and the material needs to give them opportunities to use those tools.

At Gimmel level, we built around the city

The biggest change has been at Gimmel level, where we're preparing new coursebooks built around a central theme: the city.

By this stage, we're working a lot on fluency. Students need opportunities to explain things, take a position, disagree and keep a more complicated discussion going.

So we chose subjects that people living in a city tend to have something to say about: public transport, nightlife, noise, education, raising children, and the different ways people share a place.

Tel Aviv is an obvious point of reference for many of our students, but the material reaches beyond Tel Aviv too. People bring experiences of other cities and other ways of living.

What interests me is whether the subject gives someone a reason to speak. If they have an opinion about the noise on their street, or the way public transport works, there is something there for us to discuss in Hebrew.

I've written before about motivation and finding a pace you can sustain. The syllabus raises another part of that question: are we giving students material they want to engage with while they are here?

That is what we keep working on. The vocabulary and grammar need to progress, and the conversations need to stay relevant to the people in the room.

You can explore the levels and current classes on our Hebrew courses page.